


Sink These Roots Deep

by LadyJanelly



Series: homeless!tyler [1]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Homeless, Coming Out, Coming of Age, Fanart Welcome, Homelessness, M/M, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Podfic Welcome, body image issues, the dog doesn't die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2015-11-03
Packaged: 2018-04-29 14:30:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 73,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5131052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyJanelly/pseuds/LadyJanelly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The trick to not getting broken, Tyler decides early on, in the first winter he's on his own, is to not care about anybody so much that they can break you. </p><p>He manages to follow that rule, right up until he meets Jamie.</p><p>===========<br/>2009: Jamie's rookie year. He's got his future laid out in front of him. He's still lost in so many ways.  Letting a boy like Tyler into his life is the best bad-idea he's ever had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Enormous gratitude to MissBeeksi for the awesome beta-job (back in July, omg I'm such a slacker at editing). 
> 
> And a super-big thank-you to iamsmilingallthetime for the intense feedback and concrit every step of the way. I couldn't have done it without your kind words and support and the help of seeing the fic through someone else's eyes.
> 
> Other warnings: Tyler is 17 at the beginning of this fic, which is legal in Dallas. Deals with subjects surrounding homeless teenagers--survival sex, a history of abuse, alcohol use/overuse, homophobia. Touches on the subject of religion.

The puppy is half-dead when Tyler finds it sniffing along a back-alley in Oak Lawn. Ribs and spine and hip-bones visible through its fur, half its face covered with the dried crust of some kind of goop that’s leaking out of its eyes, belly too-round and hard, distended with parasites.

Tyler’s got no business messing with the thing. It’s just that he skipped out on the guy he’d spent the week with, well before dawn, needed to get out of there before the requests for things Tyler wasn’t into turned into demands. It’ll be another hour before the library opens, and he already ate some breakfast from 7-11. He’s bored, and the puppy is the only friendly thing moving at this time of day. He has a vague thought, a memory of that time his dad took him and the girls out to Polson Pier, back when dad was trying to show off what a good parent he could be. Tyler remembers a couple of teenage boys with a cardboard box and a half-dozen cute puppies inside. The sign had said two hundred bucks a pop, and Tyler figures if he can get this one looking healthy, looking cute like those, maybe he could get forty for it.

He shifts his backpack to the other shoulder, looks both ways for potential trouble in the early morning quiet and sits himself on the curb. Nobody should be coming by until the garbage men. He makes kissy-noises until the puppy turns his way, whining and tentatively wagging its tail. “Hey there, hey,” he calls, and the dog isn’t real steady on its feet, that baby-puppy waddle compounded by weakness and hunger. Its dry nose butts into his hand and he touches its head. The cocoa-colored fur is softer than he expected, and he grins as it tries to crawl into his lap.

“Hey now,” he warns, lifts the dog and sees that it is actually a girl-dog. Her oversized paws paddle uselessly at the air. She feels like twigs in his hands, no weight to her at all. She’s desperate to get to him now that she’s recognized him as friendly, whining and lunging to get closer.

“Hey girl, you gotta play it cooler than that.” The dog latches onto one of Tyler’s hands, sharp little baby teeth chewing on the heel of his thumb.

“Ow, shit, I know you’re hungry.” He turns the pup around where she can’t gnaw on him anymore. It’s not like he has money for dog-food lying around. He spends most of his days making sure he has food and shelter enough that he keeps looking like the kind of boy people want to give more food and shelter to. He’s careful to keep clean, keep neat. He keeps his options open, a boy strangers can take out to dinner and let crash on their couch. Sweet enough for the lesbians to want to mother and hot enough that the old queens like to watch him rake their leaves or sweep their pools. He has no business at all messing with dogs on the side of the road.

He spends four bucks on a bottle of milk and a Big Bite hotdog, the puppy stuffed in his backpack and worryingly quiet. He sits and feeds her at one of the café tables on Hunky’s side patio, pieces of bun dipped in the milk for her to gulp down.

“The fuck am I supposed to do with you?” he asks, and the puppy doesn’t answer.

 

==================

 

Jamie grits his teeth and takes the ramp from Woodall-Rodgers, back to 35 north. Out of the corner of his eye he can _see_ the glowing silhouette of a building he is sure is next to his new apartment. He just can’t _get_ to it using any method other than flight, and while he loves his truck (enough to drive it down from Victoria but not enough to pay more than it’s worth to have the damn thing shipped), it isn’t really meant for flying. 

The thing is, his phone died hours ago--some necessary part in the charger-plug of the truck has given up conducting electricity. He has seen the apartment building, last month with the Stars’ real estate agent. The problem is, she had done all the driving, and there had been so many places they’d looked at. Dallas sprawls huge and tangled, and it’s the first time he has actually driven here. It looks so different in the dark, and he’s sure there wasn’t as much construction last time. Half the roads are one-way, and not a damn one of them runs either north-south or east-west; a half-dozen of them have a forty-five degree bend in them somewhere between the major highways. He’ll be on a road and the name will change twice in two miles. He cannot get to where he’s trying to go. 

He pulls off the highway, and it’s like going underwater as the ramp goes down and dark warehouses block his view of the skyline. He makes half a dozen turns, mostly at random. There’s a La Quinta Inn, and a Denny’s next door. He really, seriously, considers giving up and getting a hotel room for the night, ten minutes away from an apartment that’s furnished and has all his stuff and he’s so fucking close.

He pulls into the Denny’s instead, and parks. Sits for a second to try to tamp down the feeling of frustration and helplessness. He is a god-damn professional. He is an adult. He can do this without big-brother Jordie to hold his hand.

He gets out of the truck and goes into the restaurant, up to the cash register. A group of teenagers laugh loud in the circular booth in the corner; Jamie sees a bright shock of pink hair on one, another with white-blond. The cashier or waitress or whatever she is at the front looks halfway between annoyed and bored. 

“One?” she asks, and Jamie shakes his head. 

“I was hoping I could get directions? I’m looking for an apartment complex—The Byron Uptown?” 

She shakes her head. “Never heard of it.” Jamie isn’t even sure he has the name right at this point. 

“Bryson? Briton?” 

The group of kids are on their feet by now, jostling each other as one of them tries to collect enough money from the rest to make the bill, and in a second the waitress is going to be too busy for Jamie’s questions. 

“Bison? Biton? Something Cityplace?” It’s all sounding wrong now.

“Hey,” one of the kids says. He’s tall, leanly muscular in a way Jamie has taught himself not to look at in the locker room. He’s beautiful, golden-brown eyes and perfect cheekbones. Wide smile and a shallow dimple in his chin. Dark-tanned shoulders topped with a hint of pink where the Texas sun has been particularly unmerciful. His brown hair has been cropped down to stubble except for the center stripe which is a bright pink Mohawk. “You’re Canadian.” 

Jamie blinks. “Uh, yeah?”

“Me too,” the kid says, and more importantly, “Where you trying to get to?” 

Jamie really should have gone to the next door hotel, gotten a room, charged his phone, re-checked the email from his real estate agent. He feels color rising on his cheeks, the embarrassment of talking to a cute guy and looking utterly stupid. 

“Hey, Ty, we need to go,” warns a dark-skinned girl with car keys in her hand.

‘Ty’ waves her off, “One second, hang on.”

“It’s an apartment complex. Briton I think? In uptown?”

“Bryson Cityplace?” the guy asks, uncertain, and glances out the window at Jamie’s truck. “You meeting somebody?”

“I live there. Or I’m going to,” Jamie corrects, and that smile goes even wider. 

“Dude, are you high?” 

“I haven’t _been there_ yet,” Jamie protests. “I just…” he doesn’t feel like he should bring the Stars organization in on his shame. “Got a new job, and they set it up. I had the address, but my phone died on the way here.”

“Tyler, come on!” The driver is starting to get genuinely impatient now, and Tyler takes a step in her direction, hitching his backpack up higher on his shoulder.

 

“Look, I could get you there, but they’re my ride to where I’m crashing tonight…” he makes an apologetic shrug. “I hate to be a dick, but could you hook me up with cab fare or something when we’re done? Or, you know, if you’ve got a couch at this place you haven’t seen yet, that would work too.”

Tyler kind of half-follows the group into the parking lot, trailing out after them so he won’t be completely left behind if Jamie turns him down, and Jamie follows Tyler.

“Yeah,” Jamie promises, anything to not lose his chance of having a guide in this mess of a city. “That won’t be a problem.” 

“Hey,” Tyler calls to his friends, “I’m gonna show this guy around. I’ll catch up to y’all later, okay?”

There’s a chorus of wolf-whistles and cat-calls at that, like they can read Jamie’s mind. Tyler flips them off and makes a waist-high jerk-off gesture at the group of them. He heads around the truck to the passenger side and Jamie gets in and scrambles to get the fast food wrappers and Red Bull cans out of the seat before he pops the lock. 

Tyler swings his backpack gently into the floorboards and climbs in. “So, uh, what do I call you?” Tyler asks, and Jamie is glad his sister Jennifer isn’t there to smack some manners into him. 

“Sorry. It’s Jamie,” he says, “Hey, buckle up, okay?” 

Tyler does, and then leans down and settles the backpack securely between his feet like he expects Jamie to take them spontaneously off-roading. 

“Okay, so I know where we’re going, but I’m usually walking it, so bear with me if we have to backtrack, yeah?”

It’s better than Jamie’s flail-tastic crisscrossing of the neighborhood, and even if Tyler really doesn’t help that much, it feels better to not be alone in this mess. He glances over in time to catch the nervous flick of Tyler’s tongue against his bottom lip. 

“Alright,” Jamie agrees, and Tyler nods.

“Okay, what you’re gonna want to do is go right out of the parking lot,” Tyler begins, and Jamie drives.

It is ridiculous, how close Jamie was, how little he was missing it by. Tyler misses the last turn once, but other than that he gets Jamie there with no frustration. Jamie pulls up to the building, and the remote clicker the real estate agent mailed him opens the gate to the parking garage. He drives up, finds a spot on the fourth floor and turns off the truck. 

The growl of Tyler’s stomach is surprisingly loud in the sudden quiet and Jamie frowns. 

“Didn’t you just eat?” he asks, and Tyler grins crooked at him, shrugs like it’s nothing.

“I was just hanging out waiting for a ride,” he says, and Jamie thinks back. When the kids were pooling their money for dinner, Tyler hadn’t had any cash out. “It smells like fries in here.”

“Know anywhere that delivers this late?” Jamie asks, and Tyler nods. 

“Yeah. Pizza? I got nothing to chip in.” 

“My treat,” Jamie says. He climbs out of the truck, grabs a few of the bags he didn’t want to send in the moving van, and starts looking for the breezeway to take them to his apartment.

Jamie isn’t sure what to expect when he slots his key and turns the knob. It’s pitch dark inside, and he feels around for a switch. The lights come on and he’s secretly kind of impressed. The furniture is all soft neutrals, dark wood with creamy upholstery. The kitchen is open to the living room, mottled granite countertops and crisp stainless appliances. It’s like a hotel where all his stuff lives, and Jamie feels off-balance at it, the sterility of it. It looks high end though, and he’s glad he’s not embarrassed by it, to bring a guy back, even if Tyler is only playing tour guide and not there as a date or anything. 

He drops his keys and empties his pockets out onto the island, trying to feel the natural flow of using a new place. There’s an outlet there, so he digs out the wall charger and plugs in his phone.

“Make yourself at home,” Jamie says, “I’m just gonna…” he gestures vaguely at the hall back to what looks like his bedroom. All his stuff should be here, but he just wants to see that everything made it okay. 

Tyler nods. “Sure. I can order if I can use your phone.” Jamie gestures that it’s fine. “What do you like?” Tyler asks, and Jamie asks for a deep dish pepperoni, the same thing he always gets. 

“Get one for you, if you want something different,” Jamie offers, and Tyler grins. 

Then Jamie goes to look around and find the restroom. Takes a piss and washes his face and changes out of the clothes he’s been traveling in for fourteen hours. He stops and looks at himself in the broad expanse of mirror over the bathroom vanity. Reminds himself what he’s got at stake now, and how slim the chances are that a guy that looks like Tyler would welcome a pass from one that looks like Jamie—soft where he should be lean, weak chinned and with eyes too big for his face. 

He comes back out, and the first thing he sees is a _dog_ on his kitchen island, or puppy at least, bony shoulders and hips and a fat heavy belly between them. It’s dark-brown and lapping water from a saucer. The second thing he notices is Tyler, leaning against the counter and watching the puppy, a tumbler a quarter-full of Jamie’s Dallas-celebration whiskey in his hand. 

“Hey!” Jamie objects, more surprised than angry. Tyler grins and meets his eye and downs the shot before Jamie can stop him. He laughs his way through a coughing fit, doesn’t object when Jamie takes the glass away. Four hours in Dallas, and Jamie is giving alcohol to minors, holy shit, this is the kind of thing the PR department warned him about. 

“You said make myself at home,” Tyler protests with a grin. 

“Where’d the dog come from?” Jamie asks, trying to distract himself from Tyler’s broad smile, the way it goes all the way to his eyes, open and welcoming. 

“She was asleep in my bag.” The mutt sits down, takes another lick of water and then curls up. Jamie’s mother would pitch a fit to see a dog on his kitchen counter, but the puppy doesn’t look so hot. There’s a wheezing sound to her breath and Jamie can’t find it in himself to make Tyler put her on the floor. 

“I got a chicken and mushroom for me,” Tyler says like Jamie cares which pizza he got. “I was gonna feed her off my plate, if that’s okay.”

Jamie comes up to the island and snaps his fingers. The puppy’s tail wags tiredly but she doesn’t get up to go to him. “She got a name?” 

“I was calling her Marshall.”

Jamie raises an eyebrow and Tyler huffs. 

“Like Eminem?” Tyler offers. “She’s small, but she’s gotta keep going. You know?” 

Jamie nods. “I’ve got towels around here somewhere, if you want to make her a bed.” Tyler’s face lights up and Jamie’s heart stutters. He turns away before he gets himself into trouble, before he does something stupid and embarrassing. 

He finds the towels in the linen cabinet in the bathroom, and he watches as Tyler makes up a little nest for the dog in one of the empty moving boxes. His hands are real gentle with her as he lays her down in it. 

Tyler pets her for a moment, soothing as she shuffles around to get comfortable. “There you go, baby.” He grins down at her and then stands up.

“Hey, those assholes aren’t gonna save me any hot water. You mind if I use your shower while we wait for the pizza?” 

Jamie can’t think of a reason to say no, so he shrugs. He’d been one of the few players to have their own apartment back home, so he’s used to the guys from The Rockets hanging at his place, eating his food, drinking his beer and crashing on his couch. It was one of the perks and costs of not having a billet family that second year. “Guest bath is that one. Towels are in the cabinet. There should be some body wash or shampoo around there somewhere.”

“Thanks,” Tyler says, like it’s a big deal. “I really appreciate it.” He disappears into the bathroom for so long that Jamie thinks he’s either avoiding Jamie or jerking off in there. The pizza guy comes and goes again, and Jamie is starting to worry a little, until he hears the shower cut off. He eats a slice of his pizza and looks up when the door opens. 

Tyler looks scrubbed-clean and brighter somehow after his shower, a different tank-top on, white this time, and a pair of cargo pants that hang low on his hips. His feet are bare now, long-toed and slender. The pink Mohawk hangs wet and limp and he rubs one of Jamie’s towels over it, makes it stand up for just a second before flopping over again. 

He grins, bright and sudden, and it hits Jamie like sunlight when he expected shadows. 

“Hey, pizza!” Tyler says, and yeah. That smile isn’t for Jamie.

Jamie had left Tyler the whole couch, but he slides to the floor in front of it instead, graceful in a way Jamie both envies and wants to touch. He pops open the pizza box and digs in, eating with a speed and efficiency that’s a little shocking even to a hockey player. In between bites he picks bits of chicken off his pizza and feeds them to Marshall, who seems more interested in nosing them around than actually eating anything. 

Tyler polishes off an entire half of the large pizza before he leans back and sucks his fingers clean. Jamie wants to look away. Wants to be strong enough, but he just isn’t. Tyler looks at him from under his lashes, speculative. 

“Hey, can I suck your dick?” he asks, the same tone of voice as he’d asked to use the shower. 

_Oh,_ Jamie thinks. He feels like he swallowed a puck, ice-cold and rock-hard hitting him in the gut. “Oh shit,” he says out loud as everything comes together. “You’re a hooker.” Five hours in Dallas, and he’s alone in his apartment with an underage male hooker, oh fuck, he’s so dumb.

Tyler’s eyes snap wide then narrow and he jerks back like Jamie slapped him. 

“What? Fuck you, dude. I was just trying to be nice.”

“Sorry,” Jamie says before Tyler even finishes protesting, apologizes even though he’s not sure he was wrong about the situation. “Sorry. I just. Why would you say that?”

Tyler makes a face that’s half pout and half confused. “Because ‘Hey, can I look at your dick while I jerk off’ sounded rude in my head.”

Jamie frowns. “Seriously?”

Tyler’s eyes go curious again, like he’s evaluating Jamie. 

“You are gay,” he says, and it’s not a question. Jamie feels the color rise on his cheeks. 

“But nobody’s offered to suck your dick before.”

Jamie looks away. Wants to tell Tyler that there was never the right time. Never the right person. 

Tyler pushes back and slides himself up onto the couch, sprawls back on the arm and watches Jamie. He raises one foot and puts it on the cushion, leaves the other on the floor. Jamie’s entire world narrows to the V of Tyler’s legs and he leans back in his chair to keep from reaching out. 

“You look at me a lot,” Tyler says, and Jamie’s breath catches in his chest. 

Tyler unbuttons his pants and slides the zipper down. He pulls them just far enough down that Jamie can see the bright white of his underwear, the long bulge of his dick. He slides his hand over his abs, pulls his shirt up just enough that a slim strip of pale skin shows, so much lighter than his tanned shoulders and arms. 

“The way you look at me,” Tyler says, low, almost hypnotic, “I think I could get off on the way you look at me.” He slips one hand inside his briefs, and Jamie is hard, he’s so hard, sitting back and watching it. Tyler makes a little gasp as he wraps his hand around himself, still hidden behind the white cotton. Jamie swallows hard and Tyler smirks, like he got the reaction he was looking for. 

And then Tyler moans, takes a full long stroke and arches his hips into it. Jamie’s knuckles go white as he grips the arms of his chair. 

“Yeah,” Tyler gasps, and he watches Jamie like Jamie is the reason this feels good, like Jamie is giving this to him. His toes flex against the couch cushion, his hips shift restless and eager. His free hand reaches down, cups around his balls. Squeezes them through the cloth as his other hand starts to jerk in earnest. 

“Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck fuck, Jamie,” he pants, and he looks dazed and lost, never breaking eye contact as a flush crawls up his neck. At the last possible moment he grabs the waistband of his underwear and yanks it down, and Jamie gets his first glimpse of Tyler’s dick, long and graceful and red in his hand, pulsing as he comes over himself, spattering his shirt and the V of his body and down into the rusty-colored pubic hair. He groans through it, every muscle in his body going tight, going tense. 

Then his shoulders go limp; he sinks into the couch, lax and sated. He grins crooked at Jamie, gives him a little challenging tilt of his chin. 

Jamie stands from the chair in a rush, half-trips on the coffee table as he flees running to his bedroom door. He slams the door and leans on it like he expects Tyler to bust it down and then he can’t hold back any more, fumbles his zipper down and takes out his dick, short and fat and heavy in his hand, strokes himself three times and comes on his new carpet.

“Shit,” he hisses, and his knees go out and he slides down the door. “Oh, shit.” 

=================

 

Tyler stares at Jamie’s door, the _closed_ door, where Jamie went, where Jamie ran away from the offer of a blow-job or a little two-man circle-jerk action.

“What the fuck?” he asks the empty room, conversational like he expects it to reply. He’s had guys get weird after sex before. Get pissed at themselves for wanting to fuck a dude. A few have been pissed at him, like he has any control over their boner. Tyler thinks back, trying to remember anybody actually running away from him, from the kind of show he just put on, and he can’t come up with it ever happening before.

There’s this guy Jason, who Tyler can pretty reliably crash with. Except after they fool around Jason will pull a pillow and blanket off the bed and sleep on the floor, because it’s one thing to share some orgasms but sharing a bed is off-limits somehow. It doesn’t feel good when that happens. Like Tyler totally doesn’t expect to cuddle with everybody he fucks, but usually the brush-off isn’t so harsh as that. Or this.

He waits, and Jamie doesn’t come back. Finally he goes back into the guest bath, cleans himself up, does his hair back tall and changes his shirt (and that was a waste of his laundromat quarters, getting jizz on a clean shirt). There’s a fresh toothbrush still in the package and he breaks it open, brushes his teeth and then puts it in his backpack, along with the toothpaste.

He comes out of the bathroom, feeling more like himself, and there’s still no Jamie.  
“Asshole,” he mutters, but there’s not much he can do about it. He stands around for a minute, weighing his options. It’s been long enough that even if Jamie comes out, things will be at best awkward; at worst, he’ll probably kick Tyler’s ass for being the source of his discomfort.

Leaving it is.

He’s got a half of a pizza that’s his by right though, so he pokes around Jamie’s kitchen. There is a box of gallon-size zip-lock bags in a drawer and he takes two and stuffs the leftovers in them and puts them in his backpack. It’s weird, that he’s breaking the seal on everything, that everything he touches is new, wrapped, fresh from the store. What kind of job does this for their employees? 

Jamie’s phone and wallet are on the island and he glances at the bedroom again before he flips the wallet open, rifles through it quick and finds a one, a ten and hundred dollar bill, American. A hundred is too much, and eleven won’t get him much further in a cab than he’s willing to walk. Sure as hell won’t get him up to Ava’s place in Plano. He leaves the big bill and all the cards. He glances at the ID just enough to confirm that Jamie wasn’t lying when he said he was from Canada.

He takes the eleven dollars. It should get him back to Oak Lawn at least. The bars are already closed, and his chances of finding someone to crash with tonight are getting slimmer and slimmer. He grabs three Gatorades from the fridge and heads for the door. He pauses, hand on the knob, and realizes he almost forgot Marshall.

His chest aches, and this is the fucking reason he shouldn’t have picked her up, shouldn’t have let her chew on his thumb, shouldn’t have spent all day trying to get her food and water instead of finding himself somewhere not-shitty to sleep. He goes to her box and she’s curled up, a sleeping little ball of misery, ribs heaving with her labored breath. Almost all the bits of chicken he gave her are still there. She’s worse than when he picked her up that morning, sicker and weaker. He could try, could walk to the vet down on Lemmon in the morning. Offer them his eleven dollars for some puppy food, but she needs a hell of a lot more than that. He’s just not sure she’ll make it, no matter what he does. Another day in his backpack, if he can manage to keep smuggling her into places with air conditioning, or out in the heat if he can’t.

But Jamie, Jamie has resources. Can afford a place like this, even if his truck is inexplicably shitty. And even with his sex-related weirdness, Tyler doesn’t think he’d hurt Marshall. He’s pretty sure if he asks, Jamie will probably say no. But if Tyler doesn’t give him the chance…

“You be good,” he murmurs, and strokes her ears for the last time, velvet soft against his fingers, the only part of her that isn’t rough with dirt and grime and poor nutrition.

He looks at Jamie’s door. Maybe Jamie could use a friend, too. Maybe Jamie needs Marshall as much as she needs him. 

Tyler closes the front door quietly behind him as he leaves.

====================

It takes Jamie a while, to get up off the floor and move to his bed. He lays down, just for a minute, trying to wrap his head around Tyler, the craziness of the last hour. His eyes are tired from so long on the road and he makes the mistake of closing them.

He wakes to the glare of the morning sun shining through the open blinds. It doesn’t feel late, but it was almost three a.m. by the time Tyler had gotten them to Jamie’s place and then they’d eaten and Tyler fucking jerked off on his couch.

“Shit,” Jamie swears and sits up, remembering Tyler, the impossible things he’d said, the way he called Jamie’s name as he got himself off. He remembers leaving, running away like a chicken-shit and not even making sure there was a spare blanket or something for Tyler to cover up with.

He stumbles, half-asleep and embarrassed at his own bad manners, spills himself out into the living room and looks around.

And there’s no Tyler.

Marshall’s box has been moved to the center of the open space, but that’s quiet too. The bathroom door is open, the room behind it dry and empty. He glances down into the box and the puppy is still there, so Tyler couldn’t have gone far. The front door isn’t locked. Maybe he just went out for a smoke or something.

Jamie pokes around his not-empty fridge for a while, finds a pan in a cabinet to cook the eggs in. He offers Marshall some, but she doesn’t look interested at all.

Tyler doesn’t come back and Jamie thinks maybe he went out of one of the secured doors, where he’d need a clicker to get back in, so he locks up and goes down to the ground floor, walks around the block, and doesn’t see him.

About noon, Jamie finally admits to himself that Tyler is gone. Tyler is gone and his dog is still in Jamie’s apartment, and Jamie is pissed, for both of them, for Marshall being dumped and Jamie being used like an animal shelter.

Marshall still isn’t eating, and Jamie sighs and goes to his phone, looks up the number for the closest veterinarian. “I’ve got a stray puppy,” he tells the receptionist. “She isn’t looking so good. Can I get her in today?”

They manage to slot him in an hour later, and he packs Marshall up in her box on the front floorboards of his truck. The place is like a boutique when he gets there, a waiting room with a five-hundred-gallon tank of bright saltwater fish, a front counter that’s nicer than the one in his ridiculous apartment, huge leather lounge chairs to wait in. He feels shabby and out of place as he waits with his cardboard box full of puppy. He thinks of his signing bonus though. He has the money and he can’t think of a better reason to spend it. He just wishes Tyler had stuck around and they could do this together. He doesn’t think Tyler would be impressed by the waiting room. Tyler would make it a joke and they could laugh at the huge body-builder looking dude with the tiny fluffy dog, the sleek woman in a business suit crooning to a yowling cat-carrier.

“Mr Benn?” The receptionist calls, and then it’s Marshall’s turn. He carries her to the exam room, scoops her out of the box and puts her on the table. The vet pokes and prods her, feels along her spine and belly.

“Any idea how old she is?” The vet asks and Jamie shakes his head.

“Some kid dumped her on me yesterday. I doubt he knew either.”

The vet hums and looks her over some more.

“Okay. She has a raging sinus infection. Ear infections. Ear mites. Fleas, worms and mange.” Marshall lays her head in the vet’s hand.

“So what do we do?” Jamie asks.

The vet sighs again. “If you were financially or emotionally invested in this animal, I would suggest about nine hundred dollars of care. Two kinds of antibiotics, deworming, Advantage for the fleas. Special food that’ll be easy for her taxed system to digest. I just can’t guarantee that will be enough, or that she will grow up to be a dog without major health problems.”

Jamie hesitates. “Are you saying it’s cruel to treat her instead of putting her down?”

“No. There’s just no guarantee.”

Jamie nods, decided. “Okay, so treat her. Where do I pay?”

 

================

 

“So how do I get fleas out of my truck?” 

Jordie chuckles on the phone and Jamie nurses a pang of homesickness.

“How the hell did you get fleas in your first day in Dallas?”

Jamie groans. “There was this kid. And a puppy. I own a dog now.”

Jordie laughs at him.

It feels really good to hear it, even if home is so far away.

================

Jamie kind of expects Tyler to turn back up after he’s taken Marshall to the vet and bought her half of PetSmart. He’s just glad he’s got a few days before even the informal practices start and he can spend some time doing the things Marshall needs to not die, like getting all her medicine in her three times a day and syringe-feeding her food, those first few days, when she wouldn’t eat and water when she was too tired to lift her head to drink out of the bowl. 

He goes to the gym and watches TV. Calls his brother and sister and his mom on the regular. 

He makes sure his phone is charged and goes for a drive every day, Marshall on the truck seat beside him. He tells himself he’s learning the streets, figuring out how to get to the arena and the practice rink and the grocery store. All the things a responsible adult needs to do.

He tells himself he’s not looking for a frill of pink hair, the rhythm of Tyler’s walk, the hang of his backpack over his shoulder. 

A week goes by and some of the guys plan a Saturday night out in Deep Ellum, on the southeastern edge of downtown Dallas. Jamie gets there okay, but then it’s a snarl of traffic on narrow old streets, dozens of bars and clubs spilling pedestrians out over the sidewalks and into the crawling traffic. Power lines hang low and lazy over the road and signs advertising ‘Parking here!’ take him to vacant lots between bars, orange-vested attendants taking ten bucks a car to squeeze into a grassy space.

It’s nothing like Victoria, nothing like Kelowna. Hard rock and Alt-country and some sort of techno-noise grinding together, filling the air. 

He pays his money and parks his truck and goes to find the guys. The club they chose is jam-packed, hot and sweaty. The under-21 bracelet on Jamie’s wrist guarantees him nothing but pop all night. James hooks up early and leaves. Loui goes home not too much later, to be with his pregnant girlfriend. Jamie hangs out for a while, trying to get used to being the youngest guy on the team now, or just about. Listens to the veterans yelling their war-stories over the pounding music. 

He’s not the last to leave, but near enough. The streets are still packed though, and the bars don’t close for another hour. He’s not looking for that flash of pink but he sees it anyway; on the opposite sidewalk there’s Tyler, nose to nose with a guy who has six inches and thirty pounds on him, fist gripped in the front of Tyler’s t-shirt, yelling angry in his face.

Jamie jaywalks through the crawling traffic and heads that way. 

“…Didn’t grab her ass, I swear to god,” Tyler is saying, and Jamie sees pouting-girlfriend standing with her arms crossed behind muscle-dude. The guy has a weight category on Jamie too, and he thinks fast to figure out a way to avoid fighting him.

“Hey, shithead,” he says, and grabs the back of Tyler’s backpack, yanks him back and out of the other guy’s grip. 

“We weren’t done,” the other guy says, and Jamie raises his chin, stares him down. 

“I’ve been looking for this guy,” Jamie says. Baby-face or not, Jamie isn’t scared at all, and that must be a warning sign the bully won’t ignore. It’s not often that Jamie’s been on the ice with guys bigger than him, but he knows how to not show a hint of weakness.

“Come on, babe,” the bruiser says to his girl, and they disappear into the crowd.

And Jamie keeps a grip on Tyler, and his mock-anger morphs, grows into real-anger, for leaving his fucking dog at Jamie’s place, for disappearing on them, for the worry for Tyler’s safety that Jamie just now recognizes in its sudden absence. 

There’s a vacant lot, packed with cars but out of the flow of the crowd and Jamie shoves Tyler that way. 

“Whoa,” Tyler protests, stumbles and hits the ground with one hand before Jamie hauls him up again. He pushes Tyler along, feeling the anger swelling hot and hard in his chest. He slams Tyler back against the wall, pins him there with a hand on his chest.

“The fuck is your problem?” Tyler yells, but nobody stops walking. “It was eleven fucking dollars! You owed me that much!”

Jamie frowns. “My problem is that you left a dying dog in my fucking apartment, you little shit.”

The fight goes out of Tyler so suddenly Jamie is sure he’d fall if he took his hand away. His face just crumples and there is a thump on the hard-packed ground beside him. Jamie looks down and there’s a fist-size chunk of asphalt by Tyler’s feet.

“Oh god, she’s dead?” He looks gutted, eyes wide and shoulders hunched in. 

“Dying,” Jamie corrects, and he doesn’t really want to forgive Tyler so easy, but he’s just so wounded by the idea of it. “Or she was. I took her to the vet. She’s got medicine and stuff now. She’s doing better.”

“Can I see her?” Tyler asks, like he knows it’s a bad idea and can’t stop himself. “I…please?”

Jamie sighs and steps back. 

He should say no. He really should. 

“Yeah, come on.”

==================

 

“You didn’t really grab her ass, did you?” Jamie asks as Tyler climbs in the passenger side of his truck.

Tyler smirks and shakes his head. “Groping people isn’t cool.”

It takes half an hour to get out of the parking lot and through the snarl of Deep Ellum traffic to open highway.

“Would you really have hit me with a rock?”

Tyler shrugs at that, crooked smile visible as they ride under a streetlight.

“If you were gonna kick my ass over eleven dollars, I was gonna do what I could to stop you.”

Jamie figures that’s fair.

============

Tyler is quiet for the rest of the ride, and Jamie isn’t sure what’s a safe topic for conversation.

“Pizza?” he asks at last.

“If you’re buying,” Tyler replies, easy.

Jamie fishes his phone out of his pocket as they stop at a red light and passes it over. Listens to Tyler’s easy confidence as he orders food.

“I know some other places that deliver late,” Tyler offers when he’s done. Jamie thinks maybe that sounds like Tyler would like to hang around again. It doesn’t feel presumptuous to nod.

“Yeah, that would be cool. Next time, I guess.”

They pull into the garage and Tyler shoulders his backpack.

“You don’t have another puppy in there, do you?” Jamie asks, and Tyler shakes his head, looks a little sheepish.

“Nah. I wouldn’t pull a dick move like that on you twice.” It’s not quite an apology, but Jamie will take it.

They walk together to Jamie’s door and Jamie unlocks it, leads the way over to Marshall’s crate, where she’s whining and squirming to be let out and loved on.

It’s worth it, every penny, every pain in the ass dealing with a puppy while trying to adjust to a new life, the way Tyler’s face lights up like this is Christmas and his birthday compressed into one moment of pure joy seeing her.

“Oh, baby baby baby,” he croons and goes to his knees on the carpet as Jamie opens the cage and Marshall scampers over. She takes a moment sniffing at Tyler’s jeans and hands and getting to know him again and Tyler ruffles her fur and lets her chew on his fingers.

“She looks good,” Tyler says, and Jamie feels a flush of pride. She lost most of her pot-belly crapping out half her body weight in dead worms, but she’s got a little flesh on her bones now; her neck looks less thin, her bones less fragile.

“You can give her the medicine in the morning,” Jamie grumbles, mostly because it feels like he should. Like he needs something to stand between him and the things he could feel for Tyler and annoyance works as well as anything.

“Yeah,” Tyler agrees, and then looks up at Jamie, a flicker of surprise on his face showing for just a second before he turns back to Marshall, mock-growling at her and scritching her fur and laying down on the floor so she can climb all over him.

Tomorrow, Jamie thinks, he’ll tell Tyler about the puppy pre-school behavior class he wants to take her to, and that she’s going to be too big a dog for them to let her jump on people and chew on things that aren’t her toys.

For the meantime though, Jamie sits down on one of the barstools by the island and watches them play.

The pizza delivery texts that they’re downstairs then, before Jamie can do something embarrassing. He goes down to get it, reminds himself _don’t be dumb_ all the way back up the elevator.

Tyler has plates out and cans of soda on the coffee table when Jamie gets back, and Jamie feels a shiver of disquiet at just how happy _food_ makes Tyler, how glad he is to stuff his face. He wonders what Tyler ate for breakfast, or lunch. If there was anything at all.

Tyler gulps down two pieces and then picks a bite of chicken from the third.

“No people food,” he says, before Tyler can slip it to Marshall.

“But she’ll like it,” Tyler protests and Jamie shakes his head.

“She likes her food too, and it’s better for her fucked up stomach.”

“Sorry, baby,” Tyler apologizes, and Jamie stops eating to go get her little dish and fill it so neither of them will feel guilty about eating in front of her.

After they eat, Jamie offers up his DVD collection and Tyler picks something with fast action and lots of explosions. They slouch down into the couch and Tyler brings Marshall up to snuggle on his chest (another bad habit that’ll need breaking). Jamie looks over during a quiet interlude in the film, and Tyler is sound asleep, head tipped back, Marshall out cold on his chest. The collar of his shirt has shifted around and there’s a mark there—Jamie isn’t sure if it’s a hickey or something he did with all the manhandling earlier.

He gets up and pulls a blanket and pillow out of the linen closet.

“Hey,” he says, soft, and touches Tyler’s shoulder, feels him startle at the contact. Tyler blinks up at him, awake but not really coherent.

“Lay down or you’re gonna jack your neck up,” Jamie tells him, and Tyler kicks his shoes off, pushes to the side and lets himself slide down, Marshall held safe against him. His eyes close again almost before his head hits the pillow, and Jamie covers him gently.

=============  
Movement against his chest startles Tyler awake. He almost shoves Marshall off the edge of the couch before he figures out that it’s her wriggling that woke him. She whines and fidgets to get down and Tyler lifts her to the carpet. She hurries over to the patch of tile in front of the door and squats to piddle.

“Oh shit,” Tyler winces, because he’s pretty sure that’s not cool. He doesn’t want her to get into trouble, doesn’t want Jamie to have a reason to get rid of her so he grabs paper towels out of the kitchen and cleans it up, stuffs them down in the bottom of the garbage can when he’s done.

The clock on the microwave says it’s a little after six a.m. and the glow of dawn is just starting to warm the sky. If he leaves now, he could walk to the Cathedral of Hope before the first worship service, the best one. It’s more traditional than the one at eleven, the attendees an older demographic. Ron and David might be there, and they usually take him to lunch after, like it’s a visit from the son they could never have. Their afternoons are nice for Tyler too, the kind of unconditional affection, the way David asks if he’s taking care of himself and Ron inquires if any boy has impressed on his heart yet. It feels good, like family used to back before Tyler fucked that all up.

He looks to Jamie’s closed door, somehow less a rejection this time, for all it’s closed again and probably locked. Jamie is less of a sure-thing than showing up at church and finding someone willing to feed Tyler there. The way he looked at Tyler that first night, the way he looks at Tyler every time he sees him…well, Tyler thought he knew what to expect, that Jamie would make a request or at least take Tyler up on his offer.

Jamie running away, that made him unpredictable. Wanting to fuck Tyler and choosing not to, Tyler isn’t sure what to make of that.

Marshall walks over his feet, bumbling and clumsy and sweet, and he doesn’t want to leave her again so soon.

And Jamie. Jamie is a mystery Tyler wants to solve, to find what makes him pull away from the things he so obviously wants. He thinks…maybe if he can get Jamie to open up, what he’s got hidden in there might be really good, for both of them.

He crawls back onto the couch, wraps Jamie’s blanket around his shoulders and lets himself fall back asleep.

 

==================

The smell of fresh coffee draws Jamie out of his bedroom in the morning, early enough that he’s glad he didn’t have actual alcohol to drink the night before. He stumbles out and Tyler’s in the kitchen, his mohawk crumpled from sleep, and he’s…desperately mopping up coffee where it’s spilled over the expanse of counter, dripping down the cabinets, pooling on the floor.

This close, Jamie can tell that the ‘coffee’ scent is actually ‘Coffee burning on the heating element.’

Jamie smiles and leans against the island, waiting for Tyler to notice him. Marshall sees him first, and trots over to lick him good-morning. Tyler catches her out of the corner of his eye, does a double-take and startle when he sees Jamie just standing there.

“Shit, fuck, son of a…The fucking thing just gushed coffee everywhere but into the pot,” Tyler complains, his face pale and his ears almost as pink as his hair.

“It’s the filter,” Jamie says. “It did it to me the first time I tried using it too. There’s a little thing you have to flip down.” He puts Marshall in her crate because caffeine isn’t so good for dogs and he’s scared she’ll lick the coffee up. Then he gets a second roll of paper towels out of the cabinet, and together they work on mopping up the mess. He looks up halfway through the job, and Tyler has stopped wiping, and is leaning back and watching Jamie like he’s something worth looking at that way.

“Um, what?” he asks, and Tyler smirks.

“You’re the only one who gets to stare?”

Jamie shakes his head. “Don’t do that, okay? Please?”

Tyler’s smile falters to a puzzled frown.

“The hell did I do?” There’s a tinge of anger in the tone, and Jamie feels guilty.

Words slip through Jamie’s head too quick for him to grab hold of. His chest feels tight, wrong. “Just. You can’t tease, okay. You have to stop—doing whatever the hell you’re doing.”

Tyler crosses his arms over his chest, and tips his head, considering. Jamie feels naked, and he turns back to scrubbing the counter to distract himself.

“You are gay,” Tyler says, matter-of-fact. “The way you’re always looking at me with your…” he makes a gesture that encompasses Jamie from head to crotch “…eyes,” he finishes.

Jamie sucks his lower lip in, bites down and then lets go. “Yeah,” he agrees, because that much he can’t deny.

“But not out,” Tyler adds. “To anyone?”

Jamie shakes his head.

“Wow,” Tyler says. “I’m the first. That’s big, huh?”

Jamie shudders and nods again. It feels like a relief though. Like a weight slipping from him to say it.

“Hey, sit down,” Tyler says, and Jamie realizes he’s feeling a little light-headed. He sits and Tyler gets him a glass of water and gives him a minute to drink.

“Have you ever?” Tyler asks, when Jamie’s done. He licks his lower lip, and Jamie can’t help watching the pink tip of his tongue. “Is that why you ran that night? You don’t have to be embarrassed. Everybody has a first time, yeah?”

“It…” Jamie’s face feels hot, “I don’t like it. How I look. Naked. I didn’t want to see you get turned off. Looking at it.”

Tyler frowns, deeper now. “Somebody told you you’ve got an ugly dick?”

Jamie chokes on a laugh. “It’s not like porn. All of me. I get the job done, but there’s nothing good to _look_ at,” he says, and Tyler snorts, then sighs long-suffering.

“Jamie, okay. Here’s the thing. I’ve seen a lot of dick, and I gotta tell you, dicks are pretty universally hilarious.”

The corner of Jamie’s lips twitch, at the ridiculousness of the conversation, at Tyler’s attempt at sage wisdom.

“Seriously,” Tyler protests. “Look.” And he flicks the button open on his pants and pulls the zipper straight down, no art to it at all, like he’s standing at a urinal as he whips it out. All Jamie’s training to not-look clashes against how much he wants to look and he nearly chokes.

“Look,” Tyler repeats. “It’s just a floppy skin-bag over a bunch of veins. Big dicks, little dicks, fat, skinny. You’re not trans, but even if you were, it’s still just a dick.”

Jamie is blushing so hard he thinks he might blow a blood-vessel, but he looks, and yeah. It’s like the locker-room, Tyler’s flaccid cock hanging there, the foreskin completely enveloping the head, the shaft sloping slightly to the left. He can get what Tyler’s saying, just applying it to himself, his body, is a leap.

“The thing about dicks,” Tyler says, and wraps his hand around himself, “Is that they feel good, and watching somebody feel good is really fucking sexy.” His breath catches and instantly the moment shifts from clinical to erotic. He smiles at Jamie, slow and aroused.

“I wanna see you feel good,” Tyler says, “Come on, why can’t we feel good together?”

Being around Tyler makes him a little wild, a little daring. He swallows hard and stands up, fumbles his sweatpants down, wraps his hand around the thick chunk of dick and pulls it out.

Tyler’s eyes go wide. “Holy shit!” he says, and Jamie goes to stuff himself back in his pants.

“No, no, wait, hey,” Tyler says, and grabs Jamie’s wrist, the first time he’s been the one to initiate physical contact between them. Jamie looks up at him, and feels like he’s out on the ice at a major tournament without helmet, without pads. Vulnerable and fragile and Tyler’s expression softens.

“There is nothing wrong with that dick,” he says, firm, and slides his other hand around over Jamie’s, squeezes his grip a little tighter. He draws Jamie’s wrist back until it’s only Tyler’s hand on Jamie’s meat, cradling it in his palm. Jamie shivers again, at having another guy touching him, Tyler’s grip light and almost clinical again.

“Girls let you put this in them?” Tyler asks, and Jamie sways towards him.

“Sometimes,” he admits. He can’t find much sexy about the memories of those occasions.

“This is a lot of dick for ass-fucking,” Tyler says, like he’s just explaining the mechanics of it. “I’m not really into that anyway. But blowjobs? Big and thick in my mouth and I can still take you all the way down? Oh hell yeah.” His hand starts slowly stroking Jamie, and he leans in, chest to chest. Jamie feels Tyler’s cock bump against his and nerves fire through him like lightning.

He’s still holding one of Jamie’s wrists, and Jamie’s other hand finds its way to Tyler’s hip, slides up under the shirt at his waist.

“Oh shit, oh baby,” Tyler breathes against his neck. The tickle of moist breath against his skin is all it takes, and he thrusts into Tyler’s grip, twice, and comes on the kitchen floor.

“There we go,” Tyler says, and Jamie isn’t sure if he’s being made fun of, but he can’t quite care at the moment. He goes to sit down on the stool again and mostly misses. Tyler catches him, surprisingly strong, and lowers him down to the hardwood floor, and Jamie’s eyes are drawn to Tyler’s dick, hard and eager now, standing out of his underwear pointing at Jamie’s face.

“Please,” Jamie begs, not even sure what he’s asking for.

“I gotcha,” Tyler assures him, and wraps a hand around his own cock and starts to stroke himself, inches from Jamie’s face. The first spatter of come makes Jamie jerk, the sudden heat of it and how it cools almost instantly, the smell, heavy and bitter.

Tyler locks his knees and leans on his elbow on the bar, head bowed as he catches his breath. He reaches out his other hand, touches where his jizz decorates Jamie’s skin. He huffs out a broken chuckle, and Jamie smiles up at him. He still can barely believe he was that brave, that reckless.

“Yeah?” Tyler asks, and the question encompasses everything.

“Yeah,” Jamie agrees.

 

=====================

Jamie sits on the floor of his kitchen and tries to regather his breath and wits while Tyler tucks himself back in his pants. Tyler hands him down a paper towel, and he gets most of the come off his face with the dry one, and when he’s done Tyler is ready with a wet one to hand him. He never thought about how clingy the stuff is, how hard to get out of the shadow of his beard.

“You okay?” Tyler asks, easy like he expects the answer to be yes.

“Yeah,” Jamie says, and Tyler offers his hand down to help pull him to his feet. Tyler turns back to the coffee mess like they didn’t just exchange orgasms in Jamie’s kitchen. Jamie feels like he’s a stride behind the action, struggling to catch up.

“Show me how to work this thing?” Tyler asks, gesturing at the coffee machine. Jamie comes over and joins him beside it, shows him how the filter-holder latches on, how the removable piece sets down between two pegs. A few minutes later, they have rich dark coffee brewing into the pot instead of over the counter, the kitchen cleaned up and Marshall back out of her crate. They both take (separate) showers, and take their time drinking the coffee that was so much damn work.

True to his word the night before, Jamie ‘makes’ Tyler do Marshall’s medicine, the syringe of goop that she tries to shake out of her mouth, the drops in her ears, the ointment on her bare patches of fur. It’s nice to not be the bad guy for a change.

“Hey, I was wondering if you could give me a ride,” Tyler asks when they’re done.

“Now?” Jamie asks, off-balance again. He had come up with a thought as he was going to sleep the night before, but expected to have more time to find a way to bring it up. The sex had really derailed his game-plan. “Or we could have lunch first.”

Tyler considers for just a second, and then shrugs. “Sure.”

Jamie smiles. “You want to recommend somewhere? Good food. Nothing too stuffy.”

“Burgers okay? I know a place with _ambiance_.”

Jamie wonders when giving in to Tyler won’t feel like he’s taking his own life in his hands. “Sure.”

The place is definitely not ‘stuffy.’ It’s back down in Deep Ellum, the whole strip dark and dingy looking by the light of the sun. The sign is broken neon over black spray-painted plywood, and Jamie can’t read it, but Tyler goes to the door like he’s not surprised at all.

It smells good inside, burgers and fries and beer. It’s the kind of place that can’t decide if it’s a bar (eight stools and room for a single bartender), a restaurant (three tables, a window to the kitchen), or a pool hall (just one green-felted table along the side).

Jamie…kind of likes it. They place their orders at the counter. Tyler checks that Jamie’s paying before he says what he wants and Jamie can’t help but wonder how much difference that makes.

They take a seat to wait, and Jamie tries not to rock his chair on the one short leg.

“I have a proposal,” he says, and Tyler leers at him. Does this thing with his eyebrows. Heat rises along Jamie’s jaw and up his cheeks. His ears burn.

“Not like that!” he protests. Tyler tones it down a little, at least, and Jamie takes the chance he’s been given to get his words out.

“I’ve got a work-thing next week. I’ll be staying in a hotel out in Fort Worth.”

The burgers come, each one broader than Jamie’s spread hand, thumb-tip to finger-tip, dripping with bacon and cheese. Tyler digs in, but his eyes flick up to Jamie to show he’s still listening.

“I checked with a kennel about boarding Marshall, but she was too sick last week to get her vaccinations, and they need to have at least a week to ‘take’ before they’ll let her be around other people’s dogs.”

Tyler blinks like he has no idea what this has to do with him.

“I dunno what your week looks like, but I’d like to pay you to dog-sit.”

“How long?” Tyler asks, and it’s not a no.

“Five days, four nights. I can give you a key and a clicker to the apartment. I’ll pre-pay the vet in case you need to take Marshall there for anything, and you can have whatever you want out of the kitchen.”

“Yeah, is it…” Whatever Tyler was going to ask, he loses or decides against that train of thought. “I can take her with me, yeah? Like if I’m going out?”

It’s kind of an odd question, but Jamie shrugs. “Just take her food with you. No people food.”

Tyler nods then. “Yeah, I can do it. It’s no big deal.” He finishes off his burger while Jamie’s just halfway done, leans back and looks around the place.

“You play?” he asks, nodding over to the pool table. Jamie shrugs.

“A couple times.” He usually gets some balls in some pockets. Mostly he plays while he’s drinking, but that’s still several months or a dishonest bartender away, here in Dallas.

“You wanna?” Tyler asks with a guileless smile, and it’s not like Jamie has anything better to do.

“I’ll give you first break,” Tyler promises, and goes to the bar to ask for the balls, chats with the bartender for a couple seconds. He racks them up while Jamie eats the last of his lunch, sights down the four pool cues in the rack and picks the one he likes. Jamie wipes his hands on his jeans and joins Tyler at the table.

Then Tyler digs a crumpled five out of his pocket, pops it flat for Jamie to see and puts it on the top of the lampshade over the table.

Gambling with a kid who doesn’t seem to have much disposable income seems kind of like a dick move to Jamie, but Tyler started it so he must be willing to risk it. Jamie digs out his own bill and puts it up there, then chooses a stick.

The break feels good, one stripe going in and the balls scattering nicely. He takes two more shots and pockets two more balls before a miss leaves it Tyler’s turn.

Tyler walks around the table, eyes flicking to different solids and back to the cue. “You didn’t leave me much, did you?” he complains, but he lines up his shot and his ball falls clean.

They go around a few times. In the end, Tyler pockets his last two solids and then the eight with precise, economical strokes.

“Again?” Tyler asks, and Jamie digs out a ten to put up with the money on the light.

“Am I being conned?” Jamie asks as Tyler’s break leaves him absolutely nothing. Tyler shrugs, and a grin plays around the corners of his mouth.

“So where does a boy from Canada, living in Texas, get so good at pool?” Jamie asks.

Tyler takes two more shots, and Jamie wonders if he’s pretending he didn’t hear when he starts talking.

“So the first winter I wasn’t living with my parents anymore, I was at this teen shelter up in Toronto. I guess it wasn’t really shitty, but they had like—no special areas for queer kids, right? Just me and this boy named Davey, who was the only one who’d share a room with a faggot. No lock on the door, no adults in the halls most of the time. But there was a common room, right by the administrator’s office, and there was a pool table there.”

Jamie—he feels like he’s trying to remember every word, to collect all the pieces of a puzzle. The first winter, so there was more than one, and what the hell does not living with his parents mean?

“So we’d play, something to pass the time and keep us where the monitors were. Winner stays, so the better I was, the more I got to play, and the worse I was, the more I had to sit back and watch. The more time I had to run my mouth and say something that would get my ass kicked.”

Some guys come in as Tyler’s about to beat Jamie again, camouflage t-shirts over big beer bellies, and Jamie hears some muttered “Look at that hair” and “What the fuck, is that a dude?” Tyler plays deaf, so Jamie doesn’t start a fuss. The guys order beers and sit at the bar and watch the play as Tyler beats Jamie a third time. They rack again and Tyler breaks.

“Hey,” one of the guys calls, “You gonna hog the table all day?”

“You wanna play winner?” Tyler says, acknowledging them for the first time. He nods to the cash on the light. “It’ll be eighty bucks.”

“Yeah. I’m in,” the guy says, and goes to the ATM by the restrooms. Jamie has a bad feeling about his confidence level. Men like that make shitty winners and even worse losers.

“So how’d it end?” Jamie asks, mostly to keep Tyler from taunting his future opponent.

Tyler sighs and starts to run the table, all his balls and then all of Jamie’s, one after another, mechanical, calling each shot before he takes it. He starts racking the balls and the two guys have a quick debate amongst themselves. The taller of the two comes over and Jamie takes a step back.

“So Davey was cute, right? I had like this high school crush, but he was straight, so it was all one-sided. Anyway, these assholes at the shelter were always after him. Like calling him gay because he was friends with me and trying to grab him and stuff.”

The opponent gives Tyler a sideways look of disgust and takes the break, competent but not impressive, in Jamie’s non-expert opinion.

“I tried to keep him with me, or in the common rooms, but there was this girl he liked, and he kept trying to get with her, and they cornered him.”

“Jesus Christ!” complains Tyler’s opponent, “Shut the hell up!”

Tyler snorts. “Give me a game worth paying attention to then.” He turns back to Jamie, even as he leans over the board to take his next shot. “They beat the shit out of him, and the girl didn’t seem to care, and he opened his wrists in the shower.” His ball falls, and he never breaks eye contact with Jamie.

“Are we playing or talking?”

Tyler sighs like this guy is just too dumb for life, and Jamie thinks he probably is. The next few shots are like something out of a trick-shot video. Bouncing the cue-ball, curving it around other balls, two and three balls pocketed with each shot. Tyler calls the eight and the second guy picks it up off the table as it’s rolling in.

“Time to go,” Tyler says, and grabs his money off the light. He steps in front of Jamie, shifts his grip on the pool cue so the heavy end is forward, and nods Jamie back towards the bar instead of at the front door.

Jamie goes where Tyler tells him to, and the guys follow. Just about the time Jamie thinks he needs to pull Tyler behind him and get ready to throw down, there’s a sharp “Hey!” from the bartender. Everybody but Tyler looks over, and the bartender has traded a bar-towel for a double-barreled, sawed-off shotgun. It’s currently pointed at the ceiling.

“You leave those boys alone,” he tells the rednecks. He pushes two beers towards the edge of the bar. “You can sit, and drink, and try to be less stupid, or I can get the feeling you’re trying to rob me and shoot you in the face.”

The duo takes the third option and they scramble for the door. Tyler relaxes and puts the cue on the bar, takes one of the bottles and takes a hefty swallow, and hell, Jamie could use the drink so he takes the other one.

“Thanks, Ray,” Tyler says, and peels a twenty off his winnings and lays it on the counter. Jamie gives the bartender a heartfelt nod of thanks, and then Tyler grabs his wrist and drags him out a back door that leads off the bathroom hall.

The sun is painfully bright after the dim interior of the bar, and Jamie stumbles blind for a few steps. The near-noon heat is like a furnace, and Jamie feels like his pale Canadian skin is crisping and shrinking in the dry bake of it.

“Tyler,” Jamie says as he catches up to him by the truck. Tyler is looking around like he expects trouble to follow them out, but the guys are nowhere in sight. It’s just sinking in, that they were about to get their asses kicked in there, that that was a real fucking gun. Jamie is half-drunk on adrenaline, and all he can think about is Tyler, younger than he is now by at least two years, in a place so bad Jamie can barely imagine it. “Tyler, Davey…what happened to him?”

Tyler shakes his head and looks away. “I dunno. He was breathing when the ambulance came, but I couldn’t stand to be there anymore. Grabbed my shit and left. Hooked up with these Americans on vacation. I was in Boston the next time I was anything like sober.”

Jamie wipes at his mouth, feels like he might be sick. It’s over, past, and Tyler lived through it. He’s here, strong and healthy, live and in Technicolor.

“What are you doing now?” Jamie asks, “Where are you staying?”

Tyler gives him a wry smile. “Nah, Jamie, don’t do that. I’m good now.”

Jamie unlocks the truck and Tyler climbs in, checks that his backpack is still safe under the seat. He peels a couple bills out of his winnings and stuffs them in an inside pocket and hands Jamie the rest.

“For Marshall. Her vet and food and stuff.”

“You don’t…” Jamie starts to say, but Tyler cuts him off.

“No, really. I…I know I fucked up. I just. I want her to be partly my dog still. If I can. You don’t have to pay me to watch my own damn dog, you know.”

Jamie hesitates because he doesn’t need the money back, doesn’t want it. Tyler shakes the money at him and Jamie refusing it, or insisting on paying him for the dog-sitting will make him more stubborn or worse, feel like he’s unwelcome to the only tie Jamie has to keep him close, keep him safe.

“If that’s the way you want it.” He takes forty bucks and passes the rest back. “This’ll cover your half of the vet stuff.” He’s not usually a good liar, but he needs this one, and apparently Tyler wants to believe him, because he nods.

==============

 

Tyler asks to be dropped off not far from Jamie’s place, maybe four miles northeast at a steakhouse parking lot. He doesn’t go into the restaurant though, cuts through the landscaping and on to whatever is on the other side. Jamie could circle around, see where Tyler went, but he turns back for home instead. If Tyler wanted him to see, he’d have told Jamie to take him closer.

He goes back to his apartment, conscious of the security systems, the safety of it all. Ice-cold air-conditioning and a kitchen full of food. He lets Marshall out of her crate and snaps a leash on her. She wags the entire back-half of her body in excitement, already knowing what the leash means. He grabs a poop-bag and takes her down to the little park nearby, carrying her over the cement sidewalks so her paws don’t burn. He lets her down and stands in the sweltering heat as she does her business and sniffs around.

He makes it back upstairs with her, and then he breaks down, phone in hand and Jordie’s number dialed before he’s really thought about it.

“Jamie! How’s Dallas?” Jordie answers, the sound of guys talking, cheering, arguing behind his voice. Probably a video-game tournament, if Jamie guesses right.

“Hey. You got a minute?” Jamie asks, and Jordie is quiet.

“Keep it down you guys,” Jordie says, muffled by his hand on the phone. Jamie hears a door close, can picture Jordie going out to his patio.

“Jamie. You okay?” Jordie asks, and things feel just a little better.

“I. Yeah. I guess.”

“Jamie,” Jordie says, big-brother voice in full effect.

Jamie sighs. “Do you think there’s anything we could have done that our parents would have kicked us out of the house for?”

“What?”

Jamie knows he’s not making a lot of sense.

“I just don’t get it. Why a parent would do that. How they even could…”

Jordie breathes with him for a long time and Jamie starts to unwind.

“I don’t think there’s anything that either of us is capable of that would get us disowned,” Jordie assures him. “Did you…Jamie, is there something you want to tell me?”

And that’s not even why Jamie called, not what was on his mind at all, but suddenly the words are pushing against his chest, desperate to be out, now, before he lies to Jordie and has to start a conversation just like this at some later date.

“I’m gay,” Jamie says, sags with relief just to have the thing said.

“It’s okay,” Jordie says, without hesitation. “I know, kid. It’s okay, Jamie. It’s okay.”

“Mom and Dad, Jennifer…” Jamie starts, but can’t find the end of the sentence.

“They’ll get it. Maybe not be happy, because it’s not gonna make anything easier for you. But they’ll still love you, Jamie. Nobody’s getting rid of you. You know that.”

“Tyler. His parents…I dunno. I dunno if that’s why, but he’s not with them anymore. He’s out on his own. Has been a while.”

“Is this the kid that left the puppy in your lap?”

“Yeah.”

“Jamie.” Jordie’s voice is gentle, but warning, “Jamie, you’ve got a lot going on right now. You have to be careful, you get that, right? You have to be smart.”

“I know. I’ll try. I promise I’ll try.”

Jamie is right there, on the cusp of something amazing. The last thing he needs is some thrown-away kid and a sickly mutt.

He knows, already, that it’ll take more than brotherly advice to make him leave them behind.

Jordie must sense it, because he doesn’t even make the suggestion.

=======================

Tyler has Jamie drop him off at the Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse that’s in front of the Cathedral of Hope. He’s not sure what Jamie’s relationship with religion has been, and some guys take it weird, that Tyler will get off with them and then go to church. It doesn’t always seem to help that it’s a gay church, and some guys have a really fucked up hate-on for God. Like they think Tyler is going there to talk to God about them behind their back or something. He’s learned not to even take the chance.

So he tells Jamie “Here,” and Jamie pulls over.

“When should I come by, get the key and stuff?” he asks, his door half-open, backpack strap in his hand. He thinks maybe he could have talked Jamie into letting him stay the three nights until Jamie’s trip starts, but the kind of interest Tyler can generate never lasts forever. He’d rather not lean too heavily on Jamie’s generosity and not wear his welcome out too soon.

“Tuesday?” Jamie offers, and Tyler nods.

“I’ll catch up with you then,” he says. He texted himself from Jamie’s phone, the second time he used it. He’s already planning his backup plan for where to charge up if everything goes to shit in the next few days. The money from the pool table is a nice cushion though, and should see him through.

He’s hitting church well after the eleven o’clock service is done. Mostly-empty parking lot and not a lot of people hanging around. There’s an AlaTeen meeting at one. It’s not really something he thinks he needs, but there’s usually pastries and soda, cans he can take-with. While he’s around, the actual food pantry sometimes has stuff he can have that doesn’t need to be cooked, so he’ll stop by there.

He walks into the meeting just as the short-haired girl up front is saying, “I’m Ashleigh, and my parents are alcoholics.” He had thought she was up in Frisco with her dad, and it’s awesome to see her here.

He sits in the back row and hangs out while she talks about her dad getting picked up driving drunk and getting sent back to live with her mom for a while, how her mom keeps trying to put her in dresses and take her to Macy’s for a makeover. How fucking close she is to college and these people with control over her life keep trying to drag her down, deny who she is.

When she’s done, she comes over and sits in the seat next to Tyler, lays her head on his shoulder.

“Hey, you want company?” he whispers to her as the next kid goes up. “We can hit the gym later today or tomorrow?” The one at her house is pretty expansive, and she pays for him by-the-day to be a guest at Telos when she’s in the mood to work out there instead.

“Sounds awesome,” she whispers back, and closes her eyes.

They sit through the rest of the meeting, and then she drives them in her Mercedes, to get lunch from a taco truck and then back to her mom’s place in University Park. The homes down there make Jamie’s awesome apartment look small and shabby, fifty-million-dollar faux-Spanish mansions with great old oak trees in the front yard and huge swimming pools in the back.

They go in, and her mom isn’t there. They hang out and raid the fridge and the liquor cabinet. Tyler’s not chasing that black-out level of drunk these days, but he likes getting loose, getting tipsy and soft around the edges.

“Wanna watch porn?” Ashleigh asks, and he’s not sure what interest they could have in common, but he shrugs.

She leads him into the media room and pulls up pretty boys fucking each other on the massive television. He sits on the sectional and she settles against him. The boys are kind of skinny for his taste, willowy and hairless. He’s seen enough of thin bodies, from hunger or drugs, that he has to not think about it too much. But hey, fucking, so it’s not like he can’t get past it.

Ashleigh puts her hands down her pants and shrugs when he looks over. “You too, if you want.” It’s not like he sees enough porn that he’s gonna waste it, and she seems vaguely interested in seeing him jerk off, so he does.

She’s still busy after he’s finished himself off, gone to clean up and come back. Her knees are spread and her lips parted, eyes half-lidded watching the screen.

“Need a hand?” Tyler asks, flicks his tongue out over his lower lip. He knows she’s into girls, but hey, a mouth is a mouth. She must see it that way too, because she wriggles out of her pants and panties and makes room for him between her legs.

He’s just slipping to his knees, contemplating the challenge but not really aroused by the sight in front of him, when they hear the stumbling click of heels on the granite tile of the hall, a woman’s voice calling “Ashleigh? Baby are you home?”

Tyler jerks back but not quick enough, Ashleigh’s mom there staring open-mouthed at them, and he’s going to jail oh shit, he’s fucked.

“Oh!” she says, surprised, eyes taking in her daughter half-naked and Tyler there with his pink hair and the porn still bigger than life on the screen. And then “Oh! Oh, I’m sorry!” Pleased and flustered and at least as drunk as they are at four in the afternoon. “No, you just…” she flutters her hands around in encouragement.

Ashleigh groans as her mom runs away and Tyler stares in open-mouthed shock.

“Fuck,” Ashleigh sighs, covers her eyes in the crook of her elbow. “Now she’ll be back to thinking I like girls to punish her.”

“Sorry,” Tyler says. “Does this mean I can’t stay the night?”

Ashleigh shakes her head. “Probably better not to. Hey, you need cash for a hotel or something?”

Tyler shrugs. “I wouldn’t turn it down if you’re offering.”

===============

Ashleigh slips him just short of a hundred dollars and Tyler gives her a hug for the strength to deal with the train-wreck of a parent waiting for her inside. He has to get a cab, because there’s just not the kind of opportunity around her neighborhood that he can work with.

He goes back up to Oak Lawn. It’s early in the day, and he’s thinking about the cash he has on hand now. It’s mid-summer, but he’s been out of the house long enough to be thinking of winter. Dallas doesn’t get as cold as Boston, not nearly as cold as Toronto. Still, it’s a hard time of year to work. Getting around town is harder. People get busy with the holidays and their own families. Winter is— dangerous. A few bad nights and he’s sleeping outdoors. A few more and he _looks like_ the kind of boy who sleeps outdoors, and nobody wants a boy like that in their home, in their bed.

He thinks, in the cab, about California, where the sun always shines. San Antonio, Austin even, would be closer, warm and attainable. Having travel money would make it easier to find a ride, if he could chip in for gas, buy his own food. If he can find somewhere free to sleep for the next couple of days, Ashleigh’s money will be a damn good start on a nest egg.

He thinks of Jamie, his shy smile and Marshall’s soft fur. That’s a hope, not a promise, and Tyler isn’t sure if he can afford to trust in it.

He gets out of the cab and pays the driver and waits for his change. He’s not really hungry, but it’s hot and the clubs don’t open for hours so he heads to Hunky’s for a shake or something.

Dion and Eduardo are there in the back booth, shoulders touching as they share a plate of fries. Tyler orders a slice of cake that’s the size of his head and three forks, play-flirts with the guy at the register while he puts it on the plate. He carries it over and slides into the other side of the bench. Eduardo looks up, startled, and Dion puffs up defensively before he sees who it is. Tyler scoots the cake to the center of the table and grins.

“Caught a good day,” he says, and Eduardo raises his eyebrows and reaches for the silverware.

“Yeah?”

Tyler nods. He gets it, that as shitty as things are for him sometimes, he’s got advantages he can make work for him. His pretty face and rockin’ body, having a skin color that makes him more attractive to people like Ashleigh, more “accessible.” It makes it a lot easier that he’s not so fucking in love with someone that he’d rather sleep on the street with them than in some one night stand’s bed without. Sometimes Dion’s little brother will let them into the house for a shower or something while their dad’s at work, but they don’t have any regular places to go, nobody they can count on besides each other.

Tyler will start saving for winter soon. He will. Just…not today.

“I’ve got money for a room, you guys want to crash with me?”

The only answer to that is “Hey. Yeah, sure. Thanks.” And they take their time eating, because they all know where they’re ending up and it’s out of the weather but it’s not exactly the Renaissance Hotel.

Eduardo has an over-21 driver’s license that sort of looks like him. Tyler and Dion wait around the corner from the liquor store while he goes in and buys a box of wine to take back with them.

“Uh, want some privacy?” Tyler asks after Eduardo has haggled with the front desk clerk for the best price for two days. They glance at each other, a quick smile for this small luxury and he’ll take that as a yes.

“Enjoy,” he says, “I’m just gonna…” he gestures vaguely around and passes Dion the key. And then he walks, aching with envy. Not about the getting off part, because he gets sex, and it’s not anything really special. But about the way they look at each other, the way they smile. The way they’re loving each other through this life and if they don’t make it through to thirty, twenty-five, twenty even, Tyler will still envy them having something he’s never touched.

They spend the next two days chasing the channels on the room’s tv’s rabbit ear antenna, drinking cheap wine and reading coverless magazines that Dion digs out of the bookstore dumpster. It’s quiet and good, even when Tyler goes walking again to give them the room.

Tuesday comes and the money is just about gone anyway.

Tyler charges his phone and sends a text to Jamie.

 

================

It’s not that Jamie doesn’t watch porn or like porn. It’s just that he has always had to be so careful before, a full team of immature assholes crashing through his apartment with mixed amounts of warning at all hours of the day.

So it takes him a while to find that site that has gay stuff and doesn’t require a credit card to get in. He’s probably ruining this laptop with viruses, but it was time for an upgrade anyway.

He usually finds the first video of two guys sucking each other off, or maybe hand jobs, and once in a while fucking. Most of the guys he sees look more like Tyler than himself, lean and long and muscular. Sometimes they’re bulkier, broad and built like they’ve had too much time in the gym and not enough doing something real. He’ll jerk off quick and delete the browser history, close the computer and that will be it.

This is the first time he’s had something to look for, a fantasy he wanted to find. He types _punk_ in the search bar and looks down the page of thumbnails, reads over the titles. His stomach feels tight with nerves, like he’s breaking the rules to look for someone who looks like Tyler. There’s a boy with green hair in one of the images, short and spiky all over. Too thin though, and the title is “little punk fucked hard” and that really…isn’t what Jamie is looking for.

He’s on the third page of results before he finds something that looks right, something that isn’t the opposite of good, five seconds in.

The title is “Punks in love” and he almost doesn’t click it because the image is so grainy, the lighting so rough. He does though, and one of the boys has a platinum blond Mohawk, the other buzzed-short black hair. This, this is what he was looking for, as they smile and kiss like they mean it, as Blondie tips his head back and Buzz nuzzles his throat, breathing him in like they’ve been apart too long.

Jamie looks around his room, still not used to the privacy, the isolation, of his life in Dallas. But he’s alone, of course he is, and nobody will see if he pulls down the waistband of his sweatpants, if he takes his dick in hand. It’s not like theirs, the performers; it’s thick and short but maybe, maybe that doesn’t matter as much as he thought it did. It works and it feels good and he remembers Tyler’s breath on his neck as he watches Blondie kissing his way down Buzz’s stomach. Blondie must tickle, because Buzz laughs, making his waistline jiggle a bit.

He strokes himself as Blondie goes down on Buzz, tugs his foreskin between finger and thumb, pinches a little to give himself a little more time, to make this last.

The camera the boys are using is stationary, so there’s no zoom in on the act as Blondie sucks him off, but it shows the adoring way Buzz looks down at him, the awe and love and Jamie comes hard enough to spatter the keyboard, groaning and struggling to catch his breath in the afternoon sun filtering through his blinds.

Usually he turns off the porn as soon after as he can, but this time he watches through to the end, as Blondie starts fingering Buzz with lube, doing something that makes Buzz’s breath hitch and swear words slip from his lips. Blondie goes slow, lining himself up and pressing in gentle. He asks something, but the microphone isn’t good enough to catch what, and Buzz nods, encouraging.

Jamie’s halfway to hard again as they fuck, a slow rolling wave that builds speed, builds force until Buzz is folded in two, red-faced and gasping, Blondie cursing like the profanity fuels the strength of his hips.

Jamie is thinking, more than idly, about coming again when his phone chirps on the nightstand. He feels his face flush, even knowing that whoever sent him a text can’t know what he’s doing (unless it’s Jennifer—she always knows when he’s doing something embarrassing). He fumbles to pause the video and grabs his phone.

 _When should I meet you?_ is the text on the screen, from a number that’s not in his contacts.  
_To get the key_  
This is Tyler  
And where

Jamie smiles, that there’s someone worse at texting than he is.

 _Whenever_ he texts back, and _I can pick you up if you need a ride_

Tyler sends him back a smiley and an address.

 _On my way in 10_ Jamie sends back. He saves Tyler’s number in his phone and the link to Punks in Love on his computer, cleans up himself and the keyboard as best he can.

He snaps a leash on Marshall and picks up his keys and as he’s locking the door behind him he has a moment when he’s actually startled by how excited he is, how happy. He’s on his way to see Tyler, and Tyler…makes him feel good.

He takes Marshall down and lets her do her business before going back up the elevator to get his truck from the garage—it only took one time cleaning piss out of his seats to learn not to let a puppy with a full bladder into his vehicle. Then he goes to pick up Tyler, following his phone’s directions. Dallas does another of those things where the neighborhood goes from bright and classy to downright scary at the turn of a few blocks.

He pulls up outside a courtyard style motel, maybe apartments, probably built in the 60’s, all cinder-block walls and sagging roof. There’s no sign out front, unless Jamie counts a sheet of plywood leaning against the office wall with ‘vacacy’ written in spray paint.

 _here_ Jamie texts, and Marshall tries to get her little paws up on the window edge to see out. Jamie hopes, he hopes that Tyler sends him back a string of question marks, that he’s in the wrong place, a typo, something.

Then one of the peeling doors opens and Tyler comes out, walking backwards to talk to the dark-skinned boy he’s leaving behind, backpack on his shoulder and a bright smile on his lips.

He gets to the truck door and Jamie grabs Marshall’s leash so she doesn’t fall out when Tyler opens it.

“Baby!” Tyler calls and holds his hands out and Jamie gives her the slack to go to him. “Who’s my good girl? Marshall!”

He looks up at Jamie, turns the full force of that smile at him. “Hey, are you in a rush? Could I go show her to the guys?” He’s moving a little loose, a little off-center, and Jamie wonders if he’s been drinking in the early afternoon.

Jamie shrugs. He doesn’t have anywhere to be, but he’s not looking forward to waiting in this parking lot. Tyler must read it, because he tips his head. “Come on in. Meet my friends.”

Jamie wants to do that even less. He has no reason to think the inside of this place is any better than the outside, and he doesn’t want to think of Tyler here, even if it’s just to visit people. He’s afraid he’ll see evidence Tyler slept here, in a place that seems so unsafe. “You could bring her tomorrow, when you’re dog sitting,” he says, and the light goes dim in Tyler’s eyes. He nods though, shrugs easy.

“Yeah, okay.” He climbs up in the truck and settles Marshall on his lap. “I’m just not sure where they’ll be then.”

Jamie feels like the biggest asshole that’s ever assed. “No, I’m sorry. I—I didn’t want to intrude. We can go in.”

Tyler gives him a smile then, honest and a little surprised and so pleased. So Jamie locks up the truck and follows Tyler back to the motel room. The layers of wood laminate are peeling from the door and the number 3 is written on with a marker.

Tyler raps once with his knuckles, calls “You better not be fucking again, it’s only been two minutes!” before he turns the knob.

There are two boys inside, one Jamie just saw, tall, skinny and black, the other short, skinny and Hispanic, standing by the bed and packing their bags. And Jamie has slept in some rank motels with the Rockets and before that. And this is…horrifying, even by hockey playing teenage boy standards, the carpet brown and matted, the walls stained and smelling of mildew. There’s a heavy odor that Jamie is hoping isn’t the bathroom, though he suspects it is. The air conditioner rattles and whines and he can’t imagine anyone sleeping well here.

“Oh my god! Is this your girl?” The shorter boy rushes to take Marshall from Tyler, cooing over her and rubbing her belly. The taller boy rolls his eyes Jamie’s way, commiserating, like their boyfriends are ridiculous. Jamie’s mouth twitches, a smile threatening at the idea-- Tyler, his boyfriend. Jamie would indulge him every stupid thing he wants, do everything humanly possible to keep him happy.

“Dion, Eduardo, Jamie. Jamie, Eduardo, Dion,” Tyler introduces, and Dion looks over Eduardo’s shoulder.

“She ain’t that cute,” he mutters, and Eduardo frowns.

“Didn’t say I wanted one.”

“But you do.”

Eduardo shrugs and doesn’t deny it.

“Hey, I just…wanted you to meet her,” Tyler says as he takes Marshall back. Jamie can tell he’s sorry he brought her in, sorry he sowed this discord.

“No,” Dion says. “It’s cool. We gotta get outta here though.”

Tyler nods and cuddles Marshall to his chest. “You guys keep safe, yeah?” They both hug Tyler, even though they must have said goodbye to him ten minutes ago. Jamie steps back and holds the door, grateful for the clean heat of the sun.

“Where are they going?” he asks Tyler after the door closes behind him, quiet.

Tyler shrugs. “I dunno. Somewhere else.” He doesn’t seem happy for them.

“Somewhere worse?” Jamie guesses.

Tyler looks away. “I’m tapped, man.”

Jamie isn’t sure if he’s being played, but seriously. It doesn’t cost him anything to err on the side of kindness, nothing important at least. He reaches for his back pocket and Tyler’s eyes go wide.

“Shit, don’t pull that out here,” he says, even though there’s nobody else out in the sweltering heat. Jamie goes to the truck and unlocks it, opens Tyler’s side too. He gets the AC running because Jesus, Texas is not fucking around with this heat, and then he goes for his wallet. There’s only sixty bucks there, but he passes it to Tyler.

“How long will this get them?”

Tyler shrugs. “Couple nights, some left over for food.”

Jamie takes Marshall and nods to the door to number three. Tyler hesitates. “I didn’t…nobody was expecting this.” He folds the money up small and gestures with it. He looks torn enough that Jamie believes him. “You don’t have to…”

Jamie sighs. “It’s fine. Hurry up and go before they finish packing.”

Tyler hands Marshall over and goes, jogging over to the door and inside again. He’s gone for one minute and then jogs back. He looks less than happy with the whole thing, and Jamie is less than happy and Marshall whines as Jamie drives.

 

=================

“Burgers?” Jamie offers as he drives.

Tyler ducks his head so Marshall can lick his face. He’s not hungry, but kind of queasy. Cheap-ass vodka messed up his stomach, messed up his head. He shouldn’t have been drunk when Jamie came to get him. Shouldn’t have let that happen.

“No,” he says, “I’m broke anyway.”

Jamie almost rear-ends the Lexus in front of them and Tyler puts an arm around Marshall’s belly to keep her from falling off his lap.

Jamie makes another turn, and Tyler can tell they aren’t headed directly to Jamie’s place. He pulls into a parking spot outside a ridiculously gourmet burger place that Tyler’s seen but he’s never even bothered reading the menu on the window. Jamie leaves the engine running and puts the truck in park and looks at Tyler for a minute.

“You mind waiting here with Marshall?”

Tyler shakes his head. He feels stupid, and young. He did the right thing, taking care of Dion and Eduardo. Just. He’d hoped he was beyond this with Jamie, that he could be a different person. That they would be partners raising Marshall and friends or something. That he wouldn’t shit on a good thing for a quick buck. He hadn’t meant to corner Jamie into handing over money like that, but it had all fallen together so easy he’s not sure where he could have stopped it.

Jamie goes inside, and Tyler sits, miserable.

It makes him feel helpless, to have done something he so clearly didn’t intend. It makes him angry, at himself, that he can’t manage to be someone better for two damn minutes. He takes a deep breath and thinks about bailing. About leaving Marshall on Jamie’s seat, the engine and AC running and leaving. He could wait just out of sight, make sure nobody took Jamie’s truck while he was getting food. Rabbit as soon as Jamie came out.

He sits and holds onto Marshall and tries to breathe himself sober.

Jamie comes out a few minutes later, carrying a glossy shopping bag with the food inside, and Tyler draws himself up, squares his shoulder.

“That’s not gonna happen again,” he says when Jamie climbs in beside him. “And I’ll pay you back the sixty.” He’s not sure where he’ll get the cash, but something always comes up. Starting his winter savings can wait, will wait.

“Tyler,” Jamie says, and he sounds more tired than angry. “What the hell? Just—what are you talking about?”

The smell of burgers fills the truck and Tyler’s stomach churns unpleasantly.

“I didn’t think it through,” Tyler says, trying to find the words. “I just. I wanted my friends to meet you. And Marshall. I forgot what it looks like, that place.” Jamie reaches out, lays his hand on Marshall’s head, inches from Tyler’s arm. He scritches behind her ears, and if his fingers brush Tyler’s wrist, they can both pretend it’s not intentional.

“Look,” Jamie says, gently reasonable. “I think your friends really needed that money. And I don’t mind giving it up. And if you tell me you didn’t try to trick me out of it, I’ll believe you.”

Tyler’s eyes prickle, and it’s too much, too real. He can’t remember the last time someone told him they trusted him, even a little.

“If we keep…owning a dog together, this is going to come up again,” Jamie says. “You know people that don’t have money, and I’ve got a little money, and I can’t expect you not to ask, not to ever let me see that someone could really use a little cash.”

Tyler’s chest hurts and he shakes his head. He knows he fucked up, but he doesn’t want to lose Marshall, really doesn’t want to lose Jamie.

“Hey, hey,” Jamie says, and touches the back of Tyler’s neck. That pity is what it takes for him to pull together the shreds of his dignity, to straighten his back and harden his heart. He’s about to ask for the damn key so he can get out of here, if Jamie even wants him taking care of Marshall this week.

“I was thinking I could keep some money in the truck,” Jamie says, and Tyler is startled enough that he turns to look at him. Jamie opens a little change-compartment that’s currently empty. “If somebody you knows needs it, and there’s money here, you take it. The same with the key-dump bowl on the kitchen island. Any loose money there is okay for you to take. No strings attached. I won’t put any more in there than I’m willing to give. That’s my end of the deal. I can’t resent anything I put in those spots.”

Tyler just stares at him, trying to figure out how the hell this guy works. Jamie ducks his head, rubs the back of his neck.

Tyler licks his lower lip, takes a breath.

“I won’t ask,” he promises Jamie. “Not for a penny. Ever.”

“Tyler,” Jamie sighs. “Look. I want…to make things better. If you need, for you, anything, I want to know about it.” He goes back to petting Marshall, and Tyler nods, trying to wrap his head around what the hell Jamie means.

“Come home with me?” Jamie asks, and Tyler could say no. Could take the key and not go to Jamie’s place until the next day when Jamie’s gone.

“Yeah,” he says, and feels the knot in his chest start to unwind.

 

=====================

Jamie got Tyler’s burger mostly as a joke. It’s ridiculous-- pancetta, brie, whiskey-soaked pears and caramelized onions. Tyler is looking a little green by the time they get back to Jamie’s apartment though, so he leaves it in the nest of sweet potato fries and puts it in the fridge. He gets out a little bottle of ginger ale that he has on hand for his own hangovers and brings that to Tyler instead.

“Here, it’ll settle your stomach. I can get you Tylenol now, and Motrin after you eat something.”

Tyler takes it, and Jamie hates seeing him like this, subdued, his fire diminished. He thinks of Tyler, sleeping in that place, the noise and smell and uncertainty of it.

“You wanna take a shower?” he offers, “Maybe nap? I’ll be out here finishing up laundry, if you want to take the bed.”

Tyler nods and gets to his feet.

“If you want me to throw your clothes in, just toss them out the door. You can wear something of mine to sleep in.”

Tyler takes him up on the offer, and it’s strangely domestic to pick Tyler’s clothes off the floor by the bathroom, his lights and darks joining in the piles with Jamie’s.

He replaces them with a t-shirt and a pair of sweats that will run long. He adds one of his Stars hoodies to the top of the pile and turns the AC down another couple of degrees, perfect for curling up and sleeping in, and he turns the bed down while Tyler’s still in the shower, puts a bottle of water and a bottle of Gatorade on the nightstand.

And that’s…all he can do. He heads to the living room and occupies himself with his guitar and a movie on the TV, rolls a ball for Marshall to play with until she’s tired and bored with it. A couple hours go by and the laundry finishes. He separates Tyler’s back out and packs his own in his suitcase.

Tyler wanders out of the bedroom then, sleep-ruffled and his Mohawk soft and free of product. He looks more himself than he did earlier, relaxed and smiling, rubbing his face sheepishly. Jamie…fuck, he likes how Tyler looks in his clothes, the hoodie’s sleeves halfway down his hands, his sweatpants hanging low and loose around Tyler’s hips.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to crash out on you like that.”

Jamie shrugs. “You look like you needed it. Food?”

Tyler quirks a crooked grin, ducks his head and Jamie follows the curve of his neck, the back of his skull, beautiful and vulnerable. “Yeah. I. Sorry I was dumb earlier. About you buying.”

“Burger’s in the fridge,” Jamie says, and lets the apology go.

Tyler ruffles Marshall and wanders to the kitchen. He opens the to-go box and peeks inside, sniffs and looks over at Jamie. “What the heck is on this burger?”

It’s Jamie’s turn to flush and grin. “You were being a dumbass so I got you the craziest thing I could find on the menu.”

Tyler snorts and pops it in the microwave, gets out a knife and fork since the bun is so sloppy with juices. He perches on a stool after the food is heated and takes a curious bite. The noise he makes has Jamie wondering for a second if he’s choking, and then his eyes slide closed and an absolutely obscene moan comes from his throat.

“Holy shit, that…” and then Tyler doesn’t talk at all as he methodically cuts and bites and chews and swallows, silent except for the occasional groan. He finishes half of it and pushes the plate away, lays his head on the cool granite of the counter.

Jamie laughs silently and shakes his head.

“Give me a minute,” Tyler says, head still down, “I’m going back in.”

Jamie grins and reaches over to close the lid on the box again. “Later. It’ll still be there, and as good as it is going down, it’ll still be bad coming back up.”

Tyler sighs like it breaks his heart but he steps down from the stool and lets Jamie put the food back in the fridge. He pokes through the DVDs while Jamie straightens up the kitchen.

“I’ve got to get to bed before midnight,” Jamie says, even though it’s only eight. Tyler nods and picks a box and puts the disk in the player. They sprawl on the couch for a while and let Marshall come up and sit between them. Tyler is just so cuddly-looking that Jamie wants to grin, wants to touch, wants to have Tyler’s attention on him instead of the TV.

“So big day tomorrow?” Tyler asks a little later, when the movie hits a long stretch of the male lead’s tragic past. His tongue flicks over his lower lip and Jamie can guess where this is going, and yeah, he wants to come, wants to come with Tyler, but he wants something else more. He reaches out before Tyler can offer, cups the side of Tyler’s face in one big palm, his thumb on the soft skin in front of Tyler’s ear and his fingers wrapping the back of his neck.

Tyler’s face does a weird contortion, emotion flashing over his features, confusion that borders on hurt, if Jamie was to guess, and he wants to take it back, pull his hand away, but Tyler closes his eyes and leans into the touch. Takes two deep breaths and then looks at Jamie, bewildered but…maybe cautiously hopeful.

“Is this…okay?” Jamie asks and for one second, Tyler’s face is his usual flippant grin, before the vulnerability breaks through again.

“This…what is this?” he asks, and Jamie strokes his cheek with his thumb while he tries to find the words, the truth that won’t scare Tyler away.

“Can we just make out?” Jamie asks, steeling himself for the hurt of rejection. “Can we take our time and try it this way?”

Tyler swallows hard and Marshall squirms in her sleep between them.

“Yeah,” Tyler says, sounding hoarse all of a sudden.

Jamie leans in, and he’s never kissed a boy before, so he does it like he kisses girls, gentle brushes of his lips until Tyler leans in more, lips parted as he kisses Jamie back. He expected Tyler to be smooth at this, practiced, but his motions are nervous, jerky. Too-rough and then he freezes like he expects a shove.

Jamie just wants to wrap him up, make everything good for him. He gets his other hand on Tyler’s waist, nuzzles their cheeks together and kisses at the corner of his mouth.

Marshall gets squished between their thighs and wriggles awake, dumping herself off the couch in an inelegant flop. Tyler snickers and Jamie presses their foreheads together until they can stop laughing at their poor offended puppy.

He dares to reach up and stroke the pink fringe of hair down the center of Tyler’s scalp, finds it softer than he would have thought. The short hair beside it is just long enough to feel sleek instead of velvety under Jamie’s hand. Tyler smells like Jamie’s soap and Jamie’s shampoo and Jamie’s deodorant and he’s selfishly pleased. Wants him here, in Jamie’s space, in his clothes, in his smell all the time, safe and happy.

He flicks his tongue out and Tyler’s lips part; Jamie looks just in time to see another of those pained flashes cross his face, even as Tyler makes an eager noise and presses in for more.

“We don’t have to…” Jamie starts, but Tyler cuts him off.

“It’s good. It’s good, I’m okay, I’m…” His fingers fumble at the button of Jamie’s jeans and Jamie slides his hands down Tyler’s wrists, wrap around his hands and hold him still.

“You don’t have to do that,” he says, more sure. Tyler winces and looks down, and Jamie leans in temple to temple, stays still against him for long seconds.

“Then what do we do?” Tyler asks, like he can’t figure out how Jamie could want to spend time with him without an orgasm.

“We watch the movie,” Jamie says, “and you lean here against me.”

Tyler looks confused, but he settles against Jamie, nuzzles in and feels out the position. Jamie puts his arms around Tyler’s shoulder, feels their bodies relax against each other, the way they fit. Tyler isn’t a small guy, but Jamie has the reach to make it work.

“Hey Jamie,” Tyler asks, so soft Jamie leans in to hear him better. Tyler’s eyes are on the television, reflecting the flashy cityscape that’s zooming past. “Did somebody bad-touch you? ‘Cause if they did, if that’s what this is about, you are a _big dude_ now, and I’ll ride with, if you’re ready to go beat their ass. If it would make you feel better.”

Jamie is touched, and so, so sad that that’s where Tyler’s thoughts go when someone wants more than sex from him. “Nobody hurt me,” he says, presses his lips against Tyler’s hair. “I just…I like this. I like you.”

Tyler is quiet, and Jamie would give back his signing bonus to know what he’s thinking.

The movie plays out, and Tyler gets more and more relaxed against Jamie’s side. It’s not yet Jamie’s absolute-latest bedtime, but—even like this, quiet and drowsy and not openly challenging, Tyler makes Jamie feel like he can be bold.

“Will you come to bed with me?” Jamie asks, “Do you want to?”

Tyler’s turns his head to look up at Jamie, trying to figure him out. “I want to get off,” he says like a counter offer. “I get to make you come too.”

It’s not exactly what Jamie had in mind, but he’s not made of stone. “Whatever you want,” he says, and kisses Tyler again, sweet and careful.

But Tyler, Tyler is done with sweet and careful, apparently. He growls and turns towards Jamie and climbs to straddle his lap. He gets a good grip on the longer hair at the back of Jamie’s scalp and pulls his head back so he can control the tease of Jamie’s mouth, licking the tip of his tongue between Jamie’s teeth, nipping at his lips.

Not what Jamie had in mind at all, but a man would have to be dead not to take Tyler’s hand when he climbs to his feet and offers it. He thought he was ready for Tyler’s shift in gears, but he nearly swallows his tongue when Tyler strips off the oversize hoodie. He looks instantly older, stronger, his lean muscular back beautiful, even in Jamie’s extra large t-shirt as he leads the way to the bedroom.

“Can I blow you?” Jamie asks, and Tyler snickers.

“Isn’t that my line?” But he climbs onto Jamie’s bed, knees spread and toying with the waistband of the sweats he’s still wearing. His belly is so pale, flashes of near-white beneath the cotton. He’s half-hard, the line of him visible through the fabric when he pulls it taut. Jamie reaches out, rubs over Tyler’s dick. He’s never touched another guy like this, never felt the shape of another man’s hard flesh under his hand.

Tyler watches him, eyes heavy and lips parted. His breath catches as Jamie strokes him through the sweats, as Jamie leans down and feels along him with his lips. He props himself up on his elbows so he can watch, so he can see as Jamie carefully, slowly, pulls the elastic away from his waist, out and down to bare his cock to the air.

Jamie looks up and Tyler’s dick bounces itself up to tap his chin and he can’t help but smile, nervous and unsure. Tyler is still mostly-dressed, so Jamie feels like it’s not a big deal that he is too. He tries to tell himself that the way he looks isn’t going to be a problem, and a blowjob can be pretty damn bad and still feel good. 

“Hey,” Tyler says, seeming less than certain himself. “Don’t swallow, okay? Pull off. I’ll tell you when.”

Jamie might have fantasized about Tyler coming in his mouth, but faced with the reality of it, he’s just as happy not to. “Yeah,” he agrees, and lets his breath hit Tyler, flicks out his tongue to taste. It tastes like skin, like soap mostly, like nothing. He eases back Tyler’s foreskin and presses his lips to the sheltered smoothness of his head. The pearl of dampness there is salty, like tears.

“Yeah,” Tyler breathes, shaky. “Like that. So good, Jamie.” His thighs are like steel under Jamie’s hands, tense with the struggle to hold himself still as Jamie explores him. Jamie kisses the shaft and brushes his lips along it, flicks his tongue again and dares a wider, longer lick.

“Please,” Tyler gasps, backs it up with a hint of whine. “I need…I fucking need…”

Jamie takes three quick breaths to ready himself and then wraps his lips around the head, feels Tyler strange and heavy in his mouth as he goes down halfway, jaw open at an awkward angle to let him in. He pulls back and moves his shoulders a little, goes back down again, easier this time, discovers he can still breathe through his nose.

“Fuck!” Tyler grunts out, hips snapping up and Jamie almost chokes. “Sorry, sorry, shit.” And Tyler holds himself down again as Jamie pulls back to cough, to reassure his throat he’s not dying. Tyler lays down flat and reaches to pet Jamie’s hair, running his fingers over Jamie’s scalp as Jamie goes down again and tries to find a rhythm.

“Hey.”

Jamie almost misses Tyler’s warning, “Jamie, Jamie, hey. Pull back. Gimme. Gimme your hand, okay?” Jamie will. He will in just one second; he wraps his hand around Tyler’s dick in preparation, just one more lick, one more suck.

Tyler’s heel pushes hard on Jamie’s collarbone and he looks up, startled, pushed away so his mouth can’t reach Tyler’s dick anymore. Tyler reaches down and wraps one hand over top of Jamie’s, squeezing it until the pressure is just right and jerking at the speed he wants. The other hand pulls his shirt up, baring his lean torso, his beautifully cut abs. His face scrunches up and he bites down on his own lip, silent except for his harsh breathing as he comes over himself.

It’s so fucking hot to see it, see Tyler falling apart like that from something Jamie did. He crawls up Tyler’s body, presses his face to Tyler’s chest and feels his pounding heart against his cheek. He fumbles his way inside his own pants and gets a hand on his dick. His hips jerk forward and he jacks himself off and it only takes a few seconds before he’s coming too, the room and the world and all his worries about how he looks whiting out around him.

Tyler is stroking his hair when Jamie blinks his way back to reality, smiling when Jamie looks up at him.

“I thought I was gonna get you off,” Tyler says like it’s half a complaint.

“You did,” Jamie says, and it’s the truth. Tyler here, under him, the smell and feel and warmth of him. It wouldn’t have been anywhere near as good, as sudden, as powerful without him. He kisses the center of Tyler’s chest through his t-shirt, feels him sigh and relax.

“Will you sleep here?” Jamie asks, the recent orgasm making him brave or stupid.

“Tonight?” Tyler asks, and Jamie thinks of tomorrow, when he’ll be in a hotel in Fort Worth and Tyler will be somewhere else, alone. Maybe not alone, and that idea is even scarier.

“Yeah,” Jamie answers, “But while I’m gone, too. If you want to. It might be better. You know, for Marshall. For someone to be here at night with her.”

“For Marshall,” Tyler repeats deadpan, and Jamie can hear that he’s being teased, but it doesn’t matter.

“Yes?”

Tyler huffs but Jamie looks up and sees him smiling. “For Marshall, then.”

“And tonight?” Jamie asks, afraid that he’s pushing it, asking for too much.

“If you want,” Tyler says, soft.

===================

Jamie seems like the kind of guy who likes doing things, likes being useful, so Tyler lets him get a washcloth out of the bathroom while Tyler lounges around in the afterblow. He needs those moments to try to pull himself together, to get his head on straight. He feels drunk in the not-good way, dizzy and confused, the earth snatched from under his feet. People don’t…not with him, not like that. Jamie did, and it…

“Hey.” Jamie looks worried as he kneels on the bed, and Tyler takes the warm cloth from him and cleans himself up. “Are you okay?”

Tyler blinks, and wonders if he spaced out there, so much to think about that his brain just refused to work on the job at all.

“Yeah, I’m…sure.” He smiles, and lets himself feel the pleasant lassitude, his muscles all unwound and post-orgasmic. It’s good, right, and he’s got no reason to complain. He wipes up the mess on his belly and dabs the gob Jamie left on the inside of his right knee. The sweatpants are still wearable, so he doesn’t take them off.

“Is it too early to sleep?” Jamie asks when Tyler’s done, and he shakes his head.

“You still want me here?”

“Yeah,” Jamie says, like he means something else, something more.

Tyler crawls under the covers, untucks the bottom so he can stick his bare feet out into the cool air. Jamie turns out the light and gets in the other side of the bed, moving closer and closer until he’s almost in Tyler’s space. His hand settles light on Tyler’s waist, and Tyler rolls his eyes, scoots back until he’s pressed tight against Jamie’s chest.

“Tell me if this isn’t okay,” Jamie sighs, and his hand presses firm against Tyler’s stomach, his pinky finger just barely slipping under his waistband. Tyler can feel him relax, lies awake as Jamie’s breathing evens out, soft against the back of his shoulder.

He thinks about slipping out of bed, at least going to the couch. Getting some space, some perspective.

He tries to figure out what just happened, the whole kissing on the couch thing, and the movie and snuggling with Marshall and then the sex, the way Jamie looked sucking his dick. He’s had guys want to play house before, but there was always an artifice to it, something make-believe in the way they interacted with him. Jamie sees him. Jamie gives a fuck. At least Tyler thinks he does.

Tyler stays awake long into the night, letting Jamie hold him. It feels more like he’s hanging out with a kid like himself, crashing on somebody’s floor or couch or maybe a bed. Curling up for warmth in a place that’s cold, a shred of comfort that’s all they can give each other.

Thinking about it that way he drifts, finally drifts off. Jamie’s here and strong. Nobody’s gonna fuck with them.

Jamie’s alarm wakes them up in the morning. Jamie hits snooze and then rolls back to hide his face against Tyler’s back. Tyler is awake though; he can’t go back to sleep. He needs…to get it, needs things to go a way he can wrap his head around. He wants to see Jamie looking like he did last night, the way he _saw_ Tyler. He needs to _make_ Jamie see him.

He rolls over to face Jamie, and Jamie makes a grumpy half-awake noise. Tyler reaches for Jamie’s hand, brings his index finger to his lips, flicks the tip with his tongue.

Jamie’s eyes snap open, suddenly awake and just a little disoriented. Tyler smirks and then slides his mouth down Jamie’s finger, tasting the sleep-salt of him, stroking the whirls of Jamie’s fingerprints with his tongue.

“This…you don’t have to…” Jamie starts, and Tyler scrapes his teeth on Jamie’s finger, harder than he could if it was a more sensitive part of his anatomy there between Tyler’s lips. He’s not exactly horny yet, but he wants to be. It feels good, the way Jamie’s words stutter, and Tyler wants that, wants to do things to Jamie that nobody ever has. He wants to wreck Jamie, to leave him a different fucking person when they’re done.

“I’m gonna blow you,” Tyler tells him, pulling back enough to drag the covers off him. “For luck. For your big work thing and all.”

He pulls up the edge of Jamie’s shirt and kisses his stomach, just under his belly button. Licks there and nips sharp enough that Jamie jumps. Tyler looks up and Jamie’s cheeks are flushed rosy, all the way down his jaw and neck.

“Don’t…” Jamie says, like it hurts or maybe like he’s scared, when Tyler tries to pull his shirt higher up.

And that slows Tyler down some. Reminds him that it won’t take much to be something new for Jamie, something so good he’ll remember Tyler for a while.

“Hey,” he says, and kisses more gently at the place he bit. Lifts his head and meets Jamie’s eye and then slowly, purposefully starts pulling Jamie’s shirt up. Jamie turns his head away, but he lets Tyler strip his torso. Tyler isn’t sure what the big deal is. Jamie’s a pretty built guy, a thin layer of fat over solid core strength. This isn’t pretty gym muscles, this is hard-working, ass-kicking strong and Tyler is into it.

“Thanks,” Tyler whispers into the sudden quiet, and he’s all about fair (when it suits him) so he reaches down and pulls his own shirt off too. That gets Jamie’s attention, and Tyler lets him look, lets him touch when Jamie’s fingers trace over his abs, the edge of his ribs, the cut of his pecs. Tyler’s skinnier than he’d like to be, so he’s glad Jamie doesn’t look disappointed.

The alarm goes off again and they both jump, startled out of the moment. Jamie groans in aggravation and Tyler laughs, flops down half on top of Jamie when he lays down again. He thinks back to the night before, the things Jamie wanted out there on the couch, the things Jamie allows Tyler to do with him. He presses a little kiss at the corner of Jamie’s mouth, and Jamie doesn’t push him away, doesn’t rush to get to the main event. Jamie strokes down Tyler’s Mohawk, threads his fingers through it, petting and tugging lightly.

And it’s…Tyler is the one left feeling vulnerable, the one who is reaching for more than he should hope for. He smirks and licks Jamie’s neck, a wet gross slurp.

Jamie groans and shudders, wipes his neck on his shoulder. “That, ugh, what?” and Tyler pushes him back down when he tries to sit up, gets serious about that blowjob he’s about to give. He kisses his way down Jamie’s chest, smooth and hairless, down the soft swoop of his belly. He pulls Jamie’s dick out, gets his pants down just enough that he can get at his gear, leaves them binding around Jamie’s thighs.

He hadn’t lied when he’d said that first time about it being a fine dick. Short and thick and heavy. There’s nothing wrong with it, the way it fits in his hand. Jamie’s probably got as much _meat_ as Tyler does, just packed into a different shape. It’s still not a dick he wants up his ass--not that he wants any dick up his ass, but if he did, this wouldn’t be the one. What he does want is what that dick does, as he flicks his thumb along the underside. Wants to make Jamie feel it, feel him.

Jamie’s breath catches and Tyler looks up, feeling a flush of satisfaction. “You still good?” he asks, and Jamie nods, his dark eyes wide as he watches Tyler handle him.

“Good,” Tyler breathes, and leans down to lick around the edge where Jamie’s foreskin is stretched around the head, around and around, back and forth, teasing that tiny ring of flesh until Jamie clenches the bedsheets with both hands, groans. Tyler presses his lips almost-together and sucks a tiny triangle of foreskin in, working and teasing it with his tongue, knowing it’s close to painful, skating that edge until Jamie is squirming under him, the rest of his dick aching with neglect.

He works up a good mouthful of spit, licks his lips then he goes down, sliding all the way down in one smooth rush. He was right about how much of Jamie he could get in his mouth at once, all the way down to the pubes, jaw spread wide but his throat clear to breathe.

Jamie makes a sound like the dying soldiers in that sword-fighting movie, a groan that sounds like it hurts to make. Tyler looks up and Jamie is struggling to look down, struggling for focus as Tyler pulls back until the head of Jamie’s dick is just glancing over his lips and then down again. Aimless touches wander over Tyler’s hair and shoulders and neck. It’s so fucking hot, in a way that gets his dick hard, but good in the other way too, where it feels like he fits, like he _works_ , that he can do this for Jamie, make it so right for him.

Tyler can’t really get his hands everywhere, too much clothing in the way, but he fondles Jamie’s balls, strokes the thin skin between them, feels them drawing up high and close. He goes down, down, and swallows, hard suction wrapping all around Jamie’s dick.

“Ty. Tyler.” Jamie’s voice takes on a warning tone, and Tyler hesitates, wants to feel Jamie coming apart, coming down his throat. Jamie’s hands have gone back to the bed beside his hips, so he knows Jamie won’t hold him down, won’t force him to take more than he wants.

He takes too long to decide.

“Tyler. I can’t…” Jamie gasps, fighting to hold back with everything he has, and then he’s coming, the first spurts bitter and thick across Tyler’s tongue. Tyler pulls off, finishes Jamie with one hand while he grabs one of their discarded t-shirts with the other to spit in.

“Sorry, sorry,” Jamie says. The flush on his cheeks has spread all the way down his neck and chest, and Tyler thinks he could probably fuck Jamie now if he wanted to, roll him over and spread his ass and fuck him and Jamie would let him.

Tyler crawls up and kisses him instead, watches the play of emotion over Jamie’s face as he tastes himself in Tyler’s mouth, trepidation, acceptance, a brief flash of _ewww_ and then surprise that it’s not as bad as he expected.

“I want to come on you,” Tyler says, presses his teeth hard against Jamie’s neck but stops himself from biting down, from leaving a mark. He’s trying so hard to be good that it aches.

“Yeah,” Jamie breathes. He’s already got his, but he’s still into it, just like that morning in the kitchen. He pulls Tyler up, rolls him over onto Jamie’s chest, pushes Tyler up to straddle him and yeah, yeah, that’s a great idea. Tyler tucks his knees on either side of Jamie’s ribs and whips out his dick, leans forward and grabs Jamie’s hair. Pulls his head back and wraps his hand around himself, stares down into Jamie’s big dark eyes as he starts to jerk off, holds him there as he comes, as he comes on Jamie’s chest and neck and jaw and Jamie stares up at him like he’s the best thing ever.

“Fuck,” Tyler groans, and folds down over Jamie, presses his face in against him, heedless of the mess he’s smearing around. This wasn’t…wasn’t the plan. Wasn’t…

Jamie’s hands come up on either side of him, light on his arms and shoulders and down his ribs. Just touching him, just giving him a minute to come back to himself.

“When do you gotta go?” Tyler asks, wishing he sounded like he cared a little less.

Jamie hmms, reaches for his clock and then settles back down. “Time for a shower and breakfast out, if we don’t take too long and pick somewhere kind of quick.”

Tyler closes his eyes and gives himself ten breaths before he’ll move but he takes fifteen instead, just laying there on top of Jamie, feeling his heart beat between Tyler’s thighs. Jamie doesn’t rush him—more of that thing he did on the couch, just being close, gentle.

Tyler can’t resist giving Jamie’s earlobe a little suck as he pulls away at last. Jamie smiles up at him, soft and happy and Tyler is the first to look away.

“I’m gonna…” he gestures vaguely towards the other bathroom. “So we don’t take too long.”

“Okay,” Jamie says, and Tyler thinks they’re going to be late anyway, because Jamie just watches him as he pulls his pants back up over his dick, as he looks around for his bag (still in the living room) and his shirt (Jamie’s shirt, stuck together with jizz, not wearable). He escapes to the bathroom and turns on the shower. Stands under the water, head bowed, wondering what the fuck he’s doing until Jamie knocks on the door.

“If you want to come with me for breakfast, we gotta go soon.” Tyler startles and starts rinsing off as fast as he can.

“Yeah. Coming!” he says. Towels off his hair and hates that he doesn’t have the time to dry and gel it. He hurries into the clothes that Jamie washed for him the night before and stumbles out the door pulling his socks on.

Jamie is standing by the island with a keychain in one hand and a fold of bills in the other.

“This is for you,” Jamie says and hands him the ring. It’s just a single key, the clicker to the apartment building’s security, and a green and gold oval with the Dallas Stars logo on it. It’s the same logo from the hoodie the night before, and Tyler smiles.

“You must really like the Stars,” he comments, and Jamie looks at him sideways.

“I better,” he says, and that’s kind of weird, but before he can comment, Jamie is putting money in his other hand.

“This isn’t paying you to watch your own dog,” Jamie says in a rush. Tyler has had a lot of guys give him money for a lot of reasons, but he feels a tension start to run through his shoulders at the awkward way Jamie’s doing it. “I just. I won’t be here if you need anything, and I don’t want you to need something and not be able to get it.”

Tyler looks at the money, fights down the stubborn anger in his chest at Jamie thinking Tyler _needs_ something from him. He doesn’t. He’ll be fucking fine on his own, especially since Jamie said the bed and kitchen are fair game. He can handle four fucking nights in a goddamn luxury apartment eating someone else’s food.

But Jamie looks so worried about it, and he’s got some big work thing for the next couple of days and doesn’t need to be thinking Tyler’s broke and in trouble somehow when he needs to be focusing on the job instead.

“Fine,” Tyler sighs, rolls his eyes and stuffs it deep in the thigh pocket of his pants.

“Thanks,” Jamie says, like it’s Tyler doing him a favor and not the other way around. It’s not until they’ve gone to breakfast and Jamie dropped Tyler back at the apartment that Tyler sees the bowl where Jamie keeps his keys and there’s another hundred dollars in there.

“What the hell?” he asks Marshall, as he lets her out of her crate. He pulls out the cash he stuffed into his pocket and counts it. Three hundred dollars. With what’s in the bowl, that’s…that’s a lot. That’s going-to-Austin money. Getting into a hell of a lot of trouble money. He could…he could…

He puts twenty back in his pocket and grabs the rest, the money out of the bowl too. Stands with it for a minute as he tries to figure out what he can do with it. Finally he takes it into Jamie’s bathroom and rolls it up and stuffs it in the tube of a roll of toilet paper under the counter.

He takes a deep breath and sits down on the tile. Marshall climbs in his lap, crawls up to lick his face. He scritches her behind her ears and doesn’t think, doesn’t think about anything at all.

“Ready to go out?” he asks her at last, and she whines and gets under his feet while he gets her leash.

He can do this. He can do this and not fuck it up.

 

=====================

Tyler takes Marshall down to the little strip of grass by Jamie’s apartment, carries her over the hot sidewalk like Jamie told him to, picks up her poop in the little plastic bags Jamie bought. He thinks as he watches her playing with a blade of grass, trying to figure out how to plan his day without the pressure of finding food and shelter on his to-do list.

Jamie’s mentioned getting Marshall into some puppy pre-K classes or something. To make sure she’s not wild by the time she gets big. Tyler saw a laptop at Jamie’s place, but Jamie didn’t tell him he could use it, and he knows he’s not tech-smart enough to make sure it doesn’t show he’s been on it. Safer to take Marshall back up and walk to the library, use the internet or the books there.

Marshall isn’t a big fan of the elevator, and he doesn’t want her to get too used to being carried on it, so he crouches down so he can pet her as a distraction while it goes up. He steps out and there’s a guy coming out of the parking garage door. Not Jamie-tall, but as tall as Tyler, crisp white shirt and the collar unbuttoned. Probably running home for lunch from a nearby office, Tyler would guess. Late-thirties maybe, fit and not bad looking.

He sees Tyler and glances him up and down. “Hi, how’s it going?” he asks, and they’re going in the same direction, fall into step.

“Not bad at all,” Tyler answers. Marshall loops around him and tangles him up and he has to spin all the way around to get straightened out.

“You live here?” the guy asks, and Tyler almost laughs, knowing where this is going already.

“Nah. Just watching the pup for a friend.”

The guy Hmm’s and nods at that. “Hey, if you’ll be around later, you could come over for drinks.”

And he could. Come over. At least get drunk and get off. Maybe get a little something more out of the arrangement. If he was the thing Jamie accused him of, that first night, he could lay down a price right now, and knowing this place, the kind of people who live here, Tyler’s pretty sure he could get plenty to make it worth his while.

But Jamie wouldn’t like it, and really, Tyler doesn’t need it. He could, but he knows better than to shit where he sleeps.

“Sorry,” he says, and doesn’t think he manages to put any actual indication of regret into his tone. “I’ve got homework to do.”

The guy blinks, like something in that surprised him, but he nods. “Priorities. I understand. If you change your mind though…”

Tyler nods. “You’ll be the first to know.”

 

=============

 

Okay, so Tyler has never been book-smart. He knows that. The library might be one of the places he hangs out, but it’s just because of the AC and the easy access to the bathrooms and the water fountain. Really, besides food, it has most of his daytime needs covered. He reads the magazines sometimes, and fucks around on the internet if a computer is empty, checking out some sports sites, following the Leafs.

He’s never really looked for something specific, so he needs a librarian to help him find the section. She’s nice, and doesn’t make him feel dumb even though it would be really easy to. He tries not to swear too much as he tells her all about Marshall, what a smart puppy she is, and how he’s looking after her for Jamie and trying so hard to do a good job.

She gets him to the right place but then someone else comes up asking for help and Tyler waves her away because he’s got this. He stares at all the plastic-wrapped spines, dozens of books. He starts pulling a few down that have good covers or lots of pictures. It’s just so overwhelming he ends up sitting on the floor, books piled around him, fuzzy puppy faces smiling up at him. The librarian comes over after he’s floundered on his own. “Maybe you should narrow it down a little. Try to figure out what you would like to work on with her first and focus on that.”

Jamie talked mostly about trying to keep Marshall from accidentally mauling people but Tyler thinks her pissing in Jamie’s apartment is a more immediate problem, so he focuses on house training. He has the librarian break his twenty and give him a roll of dimes for the copy machine, and he copies the important parts out of about ten different books so he can take them home with him. Then he does go home, because all the books said a puppy Marshall’s age couldn’t hold it more than a couple hours and that every time she pisses in the house makes it harder to teach her that’s not where to go.

The dude from earlier isn’t around, and Tyler is definitely not sad about that.

Marshall is whiny and wriggly and needs to go now now now so he runs her back down, but she pisses in the elevator. The books say to tell her no if he catches her doing it, but he figures it was his fault more than hers so he settles for just ignoring it.

They get outside and he carries her to the grass, lets her play a bit. And she’s not that heavy, he figures, and he’s got nothing to do all evening. He goes back upstairs, gets his backpack and a baggie of her food in case they’re out late, a bottle of water for each of them and a plastic lid from a protein powder bucket that was empty in the trash.

“Wanna go to meet daddy’s friends?” he asks, and her little tail wags. “Come on, baby. This is gonna be awesome. They’re gonna love you.”

 

==================

A week of good eating and all the medicine Jamie got for her has made Marshall a healthier dog, which also means she’s a less portable dog. Tyler sets out for the CoH, aiming to get there before the Wednesday evening service, but she doesn’t want to stay in his backpack (and this time of day he’s not even sure it’s healthy for her to be that hot). She wriggles to get put down and then refuses to walk, so he carries her in his arms and she’s hot and fuzzy and he’s hot and sweaty.

It’s pretty miserable, and when he gets to church, there’s no way she’s going to sit in his bag like the purse-dogs some people bring in with them. There’s a little short wall near the door though, out of the sinking sun and getting a hint of breeze. He sits there and gets their water bottles out, listens to the hymns being sung inside as he pours some in Marshall’s dish for her, feeds her a few bites of kibble from his hand.

There is a long period of silence, and he knows from experience that communion isn’t very noisy. Then another song and the ushers are coming to open the doors, hugging the parishioners as they leave.

The couple that Tyler had been hoping to see are nearly the last to leave, Ron tall and thin as a rail, white hair and pencil-thin mustache, David beside him with his cane.

It always surprises him, how glad they are to see him, after that first time he met them at the church picnic.

“Tyler!” Ron calls and they head over to him. He gathers Marshall’s dish up and picks her up so they don’t have to walk across the grass to get to him.

“You worried us,” David admonishes. “We haven’t seen you in weeks.”

Tyler shrugs, but he can’t keep the pleased smile off his face. “I had a couple of busy Sundays.”

“Oh?” Ron asks, and must read something on Tyler’s face because he brightens. “Oh! Well. That calls for a celebration. Dinner?” He looks to David. “That Thai place? The one on Lemmon with the patio?”

“That would do,” David says, but his eyes are on Marshall, bright with curiosity. “And who is this fine fellow?” 

“This is Marshall,” Tyler says, shifting her in his arms so David can reach her but she can’t scratch him. “She’s part of the busy Sundays, kind of.”

David pets her, murmuring soft and Tyler has never seen her calm down at attention before, but she settles and is quiet when Ron takes his turn. 

“We should go before it gets too late,” Ron suggests. 

They walk the short way to their car, Tyler trailing just behind them. He holds the door as Ron helps David get in the passenger seat and closes it firmly when David is all in.

Tyler rides in the back, Marshall in his lap, and the couple talk over the service, discuss which songs they used and if they could think of a more fitting one. It’s good to listen to. Tyler can’t remember his parents ever talking like this, even before they started fighting, before Tyler started spending nights and weekends and then weeks elsewhere, fucking and sleeping outdoors and getting drunk with boys like him. He smiles and tips his head back and scratches Marshall to keep her still and quiet in his lap.

They give him until the food has been ordered (he always lets them pick his, because he doesn’t know enough to have a preference and they take such delight in debating what he should try) before David pins him with a gaze.

“So. These busy Sundays.”

Tyler honest-to-god blushes, feels his cheeks flush warm as an uncontrollable smile curves his lips. “So. I met a boy,” he says, and it sounds so innocent like that, so clean. “I think I met the boy who’s gonna break my heart,” he adds, feels his smile tremble. Ron’s smile fades, David frowns.

“Oh, Tyler,” Ron says, reaches out to put his cool and wrinkled hand on Tyler’s. “Why do you think that?”

“Nobody has the right to hurt you,” David says, “If this boy…you don’t have to let anybody hurt you.”

Tyler shakes his head. “It’s not like that. He just. He’s so f—freakin’ hot, and nice and good, and somebody convinced him he’s not. When he realizes how much better he could do, he won’t be with somebody like me.”

David sighs and Ron squeezes Tyler’s hand, his grip surprisingly strong. “Tyler. You listen to me, kid. You are beautiful and kind and sweet. Any guy who can’t see that doesn’t deserve you anyway. If you like this guy, if he’s as good as you say, then he’ll see it.”

Tyler…he really isn’t used to this, to trusting and hoping. He closes his eyes, and tries to imagine, a month from now, maybe two. With a Jamie who still likes him, still wants him, hasn’t gotten bored yet.

“His name is Jamie,” Tyler says, and it’s embarrassing, how little he knows about someone who has so much impact on him—at least how little he can tell to two decent gentlemen in a nice restaurant. “He has an awesome apartment and a sh—crappy truck.” He feels himself starting to smile again. “I left a sick puppy at his place and bailed, the first time I met him, and he took care of her and didn’t kick my ass the next time he saw me.” He nods down to where she’s eating at his feet, oblivious to being talked about. 

“Older then?” David asks, like it’s a test but not for Tyler. Tyler guesses he must not have met Ron when they were young (or at least Ron was) because there is a definite age gap there.

Tyler shrugs. “Not that much. I’m not sure…how he lives like he does. He seems like the legit-job kind of guy, but I dunno what he does, where he works.” He thinks back to that night in Deep Ellum. “He’s not legal to drink yet, so pretty young.”

He tells them about that day playing pool, scamming those rednecks together, and about how Jamie is so weird about Tyler seeing him naked.

The food is amazing. Tyler has no idea what he’s eating. Some kind of stuffed turkey wings, and a soup that makes his nose run, and some noodles with red stuff on them and chopped peanuts over it. But good. So good. Marshall whines for tidbits but he feeds her dog food instead.

After, he watches Ron help David up out of his chair, gentle hands under his elbows so he doesn’t leave bruises. It’s impossible, because he can’t even think next month, next year, but he wants this too, this forever kind of closeness like they have.

 

===================

Ron and David give Tyler their number before they drop him off at Jamie’s apartment. “Don’t feel like you have to put up with any kind of bad behavior from this guy,” David tells him, his voice firm. Tyler’s smile is fond as he imagines David thwacking Jamie with his cane. 

“I know,” Tyler says, but Ron looks at him a little sad, like he isn’t sure Tyler does. Tyler isn’t so sure either, but there’s nothing to do about it. 

It’s not really late by his usual standards. He could probably get Marshall to bed and still go clubbing, but it’s Wednesday. Lighter crowds means it’s harder to slip into the clubs, less chance of finding someone he already knows, less fun to be had just hanging with people out on the streets. And…he doesn’t _need_ to find someone to bring him home; he has a place to sleep, and…he realizes he’s avoiding thinking about it, Jamie’s home open for him. He takes Marshall for one last walkies, and then they go up.

Jamie’s apartment is achingly quiet without him there. The soft hush of road traffic outside is too soft to even count as white noise. Tyler crates Marshall and then wanders around. Does a mental inventory of the kitchen, divides it out by the next four days and figures he won’t leave Jamie much at that rate, but he doesn’t have to scramble for food if he doesn’t want to. Three hundred and eighty dollars, he remembers, and his gut twists like he’s been eating dumpster-finds in the summer. He doesn’t have to work out how to get food at all, and he doesn’t really know what to do with that idea, how he’ll fill his time, how he’ll know he’s doing it right. 

He just—can’t think about it so he goes to Jamie’s room instead, the broad bed still messed up from their morning. Tyler takes off his backpack and his shoes and stretches out in the space Jamie’s body took up, closes his eyes and breathes in the smell of him. 

He can’t remember the last time he slept in a space this big, this empty, a locked front door between him and the next closest person. He lays on Jamie’s bed and breathes for a while, until he grows fidgety and restless. He grabs three pillows and the comforter that’s softer than the blanket Jamie put over him the last time he slept on the couch. He moves out there and makes a nest, makes a mess because there’s nobody to complain or get annoyed at him for it. He flips through shows on the TV, and falls asleep to some show with a blond FBI lady who works with a mad scientist and his son. 

==============

Thursday, Tyler discovers the gym at Jamie’s apartment complex - cardio machines, free-weights, a freakin’ sauna. He works out until he aches. He knows four more days isn’t enough time to bulk up, enough time to make much change to his body. But he knows to take advantage of every bit of help he can get keeping his looks, keeping his shape. And he thinks maybe, if this thing they’ve got going can possibly last, that he might be able to start a regular plan now. 

He walks Marshall every ninety minutes the first day, every two hours on Friday, and she manages to not piss in the apartment, hall or elevator.

Friday night, he takes a few bucks out of the hiding place and heads down to Deep Ellum. He’s never heard of the band playing at The Door before, but it’s an all-ages club, and it feels good to lose himself in the music, the dance floor. He loses his shirt somewhere, hot and sweaty and dying for any cool breeze against his skin. He lets some guy lick his neck, grind their hips together, and Tyler knows he could go home with him but he’s just not feeling it. He’s hard, and he wants, just not this guy, not any guy that’s in Dallas tonight.

He runs into Ava and her friends and chips in gas money to get back to Jamie’s place, the bare skin of his back sticking to her seats and the kids crammed in against him. 

He’s exhausted but restless too when he gets back upstairs. Jerks off in Jamie’s bed, one hand around his dick and the other caressing dry over his hole. He thinks, maybe, he’d let Jamie do that, maybe he’d like it, Jamie touching him. Not going inside, just touching where his body is so sensitive. 

He cleans up and goes back to his spot on the couch. Wonders if Jamie will let him stay a night when he gets back. Wonders if he’ll have the nerve to take him up on it. Wonders if he can get Jamie all the way naked, show him just how fucking beautiful he actually is. 

Saturday morning he walks Marshall again and then gets some more money out of his hiding place. He rides the bus up to the thrift store to find a new shirt, dark blue and just the right amount of tight, V-necked in front and long down his waist, the only damage on it the two tiny snags in the collar from the price-tag staple. On the way back he stops at the grocery store. Ron promised that the recipe on the back of the chili seasoning package is easy and good, and Tyler has enough experience ‘helping’ in the kitchen at various places he has slept at over the years that he thinks he can handle it. He picks up the ingredients and heads back. 

He’s just putting the meat in the fridge when there’s a knock on the door. He holds his breath for a second, and the knock repeats and he goes to look out of the peep-hole. 

The neighbor is on the other side, head turned as he looks down the hall like he’s keeping watch. 

“Hey,” the guys calls, “Hey, it’s Mark, from a few doors down. You got a minute? There was an email from the apartment complex. I wasn’t sure if you got it.” 

Tyler frowns. He doesn’t want to open that door, but he wants Jamie to miss something important even less. He turns the deadbolt and opens the door, his booted foot just inside. 

“Oh hey!” Mark says, too-bright and taking a step forward only to bump back when Tyler doesn’t let the door give at all.

“Oh, sorry. Hey. There was an email. About the 5K that’s starting outside tomorrow. I didn’t want you to miss a class or something because of the traffic situation.”

Tyler honestly can’t tell if the guy is trying to be helpful or just looking for a way in. Either way, he’s heard what he needs to.

“I don’t have school on Sunday,” he says, flat, and Mark’s smile doesn’t diminish. 

“Oh. Then you could hang out today. What do you drink? Beer? Vodka?”

“No thanks,” Tyler says, with a lot more politeness than he would if it wasn’t Jamie’s home he was in, Jamie that he’d be making a bad impression of. He goes to push the door closed, because the guy just isn’t getting the hint otherwise, but there’s a foot in the way.

Tyler pulls himself up to his full height, takes a deep breath in that broadens his shoulders and raises his chest. “You’re gonna want to move that foot,” he says, and the guy shrugs.

“Aww, don’t be that way. I’m just trying to be friendly.”

“Then move,” Tyler growls, and Marshall is whining and dancing like she wants to come to his aid but is scared out of her puppy mind. 

“Have a drink with me. Just one. If you don’t like it, you can leave.”

Tyler yanks the door open a couple inches, and Mark falls off-balance against it. And then there’s room, for Tyler’s foot to strike out quick, hit him right at the cuff of his fancy dress slacks. Mark yelps and draws his foot up and Tyler shoves him back out of the door. 

“Fuck off before I call the cops, you fucking asshole!” he swears, heart-pounding afraid, throwing out the bluff before the other guy can use it. “I am fifteen years old and you’re offering me hard liquor to suck your dick; you do _not_ want me telling the world about it.”

The guy stumbles back, calling Tyler a slut and a tease but his eyes are wide and it’s starting to sink in, the kind of trouble he could be getting himself in for the sake of getting his dick wet. 

Tyler slams the door and locks it. Fuck. Fuck fuck. He gathers Marshall up and wonders if Mark will call the cops first. He’s sure he kicked him hard enough to leave a bruise, maybe hard enough for the bruise to match the treads on the front of his boot. It’s only the fourth floor, and the balconies have great rails. He’s sure he could drop down, even carrying Marshall in his bag. 

He wants to call Jamie, but Jamie is busy, didn’t ask Tyler to call him, left money so it wouldn’t be necessary. He’s not sure what would be worse, bugging him while he’s at a work thing or having the police show up at the apartment.

He thinks of all the ways this could go wrong, all the ways he can avoid or limit the damage from things he can’t control. 

He’s on full alert, but nothing happens; Mark doesn’t show his face again, Marshall eats and goes into her crate at bedtime. Tyler gets everything ready for Jamie to come home. He thinks, when he wakes up in the morning, the dining chair still pressed up under the doorknob, that he was kind of dumb, spending all that energy for nothing.

 

===============

Training Camp with the Stars is an incredible experience. The best words Jamie can think of are like ‘liberating’ and ‘exhilarating’. Like playing at the World Junior Tournament the winter before, he feels like he’s finally challenged to the utmost edge of his ability, that he’ll have skilled guys to play with, room to grow. Partnered with players that can be there for his passes, feed him the puck when he needs it. He’s finally not the biggest fish in a little pond and it feels amazing.

Three days of training camp, and he wants to be here for a good long time, wants to learn everything he can from guys like Modano and Eriksson and Richards. He likes the guys. After their workouts and practices and skirmishes they make friendly overtures, taking him out with them and sneaking him beers. He’s the rookie and the youngster, and he takes the position with good grace, not letting their good natured chirping get to him.

The thing that does get to him is James Neal on the bench beside him as the guys are going through shootout drills, yelling “Shoot the puck faggot! Just shoot it, you’re gonna miss anyway!”

It’s been three days of this shit. It doesn’t hurt Jamie for Jamie’s sake. But he imagines someone saying it to Tyler, one of Tyler’s street-kid friends. Saying it with the ability to back that word up with real harm, and it flips some switch in Jamie’s head, makes him mad in a way that even a punch to his own face wouldn’t.

“Hey!” He barks out before he thinks about it, and Neal and half the bench turn towards him. He knows he’s been quiet for the whole event, and people are staring at him. He wishes he could listen to that voice that’s saying ‘this is the wrong kind of attention’ but he can’t.

“That’s enough,” he says, hopes Neal gets it and shuts up.

“What?” Neal seems more puzzled than offended. “Dude. I didn’t mean anything by it. It’s fine. Not like anybody here thinks I’m seriously calling them gay.”

“I’m serious that you’re pissing me off with that shit,” Jamie cuts back, and Neal looks clueless before annoyance takes over.

“Fuck you,” Neal says, looking around for support. There is a murmur of confusion around, like nobody can figure out why Jamie is making a big deal.

“Yeah, fine, fuck me, whatever,” Jamie says, “But use that word again and I’ll punch your teeth down your throat.”

The captain skates over then, drawn to the discord.

“Problem, gentlemen?”

“Faggot doesn’t like the word faggot,” Neal complains, and Jamie grinds the mouthguard between his teeth.

“Don’t say faggot,” Mike snaps at Neal, “Don’t make trouble,” he tells Jamie. Jamie nods, but he means it more like ‘I’ll try’ than any promise to succeed.

 

==============

So training camp is busy and exhausting and there is media and team-building and _something_ going almost all day every day. There aren’t many moments when Jamie isn’t rushing to do one thing or another, isn’t bone-tired and trying to finish his shower and fall into bed before he sleeps on the floor.

Those moments he does find, alone and awake, he thinks about Tyler, hopes he’s doing okay, that he’s enjoying Jamie’s TV and stocked kitchen and king-size bed. Jamie worries did he leave Tyler enough money, is Tyler getting upset at Marshall for pissing by the door more than she does in the park.

He wonders, in his weaker moments, if Tyler is thinking of him. If Tyler is touching himself, or if someone else is. He feels a hot flare of jealousy, laying in his hotel bed, Larsen snoring in the other. He doesn’t know if he’s allowed to feel that way, if he has any right to expect that that’s not happening, right this minute. He wants…he doesn’t know what he wants. More. A lot more. He thinks knowing Tyler better would be a start.

 

=============

Sunday morning is another swirl of working out and media fluff. In between, he talks to Larsen a bit, some with Wandell. Between the Danish and Swedish and his English, they get on the topic of video games, and Jamie already has his system set up and he’s invited them back to his place before he’s thought it through.

Tyler’s expecting him at four, and Eriksson just told a story about showing up with unexpected guests and finding his girl in a lacy little thing waiting for him on the couch. She nearly separated him from his anatomy over it. Jamie doesn’t _think_ Tyler would throw that kind of surprise on him, but he believes in learning from others’ fuckups, so he texts: _on schedule guys coming with me_  
  
There’s a long wait and he gets caught up in tales of playoffs past.

When he looks at his phone again, Tyler has replied.

_k. Just walked Marsh.wlk her again when you get here_  
Food on stov is ready to eat  
Txt me whenevr 

That…is nothing like the response Jamie was expecting, and the sharp stab of disappointment surprises him.

 _wait_ he types back, hits send as fast as he can.  
_are u leavi  
I can ditch them_

But maybe that’s not it, maybe Tyler never intended to be there when Jamie got home. He feels too out-there, too exposed. But he wants, for Tyler to be at his place when he gets back. In his space so Jamie can see him, touch him later if Tyler wants him to.

 _???_ Tyler sends back, and Jamie debates calling him, but there’s too much going on, too many people around.

 _are u leaving bcs im briging the guys?_ Jamie types back, taking the time to get the entire thought out there.

And the wait for Tyler’s next message drags on and on, makes Jamie nearly sick with the uncertainty.

 _yes?_ the reply comes at last, and that’s at least something Jamie can work with.

 _rather hang with you than them_ he sends.

_they can come if you dont mind thm meetme  
I wont embaras u_

__Tyler embarrassing him was the absolute least of his worries, but he doesn’t want to force him to hang out with guys he doesn’t even know. __

 _Up to u_ Jamie types back.

He smiles when he reads Tyler’s reply _dummass. Not gonna say don’t bring your friends to your own dam plce_

=============

Jamie meets the guys in the bottom of the parking garage so he can clicker them in and let them follow him up to his floor in their cars. They’re with him when he slots his key in the door to his apartment, unlocks the door and releases the spicy smell of chili out into the hallway.

Marshall scrambles out the second the door cracks open, whining happily and jumping up on Jamie’s shin, her sharp little nails making ripping noises on his jeans. “What did you do to my dog?” Jamie asks, “She got _huge!_ It’s only been four days!”

Tyler looks over from where he’s standing at the stove. He’s wearing one of Jamie’s Underarmor shirts, looser around his shoulders and torso than it would be on Jamie but not actually baggy. He’s got one of Jamie’s Rockets ball caps on too, the bill turned backwards so it covers all of the pink stripe of his hair. He looks…just like a bro, like some rookie kid crashing at Jamie’s place for some reason.

“Hey,” Tyler calls over, puts the lid back on the pot and wipes his hands on the towel he’s got thrown over his shoulder.

“Hey,” Jamie says back, “Tyler. This is Philip, Tom.” He’s going to have to have that talk soon, where he tells Tyler what his job is, who these guys are to him. Now just seems like a really awkward time though.

“Nice to meet you,” Tyler says, and shakes hands with the guys, but his eyes are on Jamie’s face, the stick-mark bruise on his cheekbone that he’d completely forgotten about. Tyler’s eyebrows twitch a question at him, and Jamie half-shrugs that it’s no biggie, tell you later.

“You play?” Wandell asks. “Hockey?”

Tyler reaches up to touch the Kelowna patch on the back of the hat, the little cartoon dragon with the hockey stick, and shrugs. “Nah. Not since I was a kid.”

Larsen scoffs at him, tells him he’s still a kid. Of all the guys Jamie could have brought home to Tyler, he thinks this probably works out for the best. They’re closest in age to Jamie (and therefore Tyler), and their limited experience with North American culture keeps them from really questioning Tyler’s role in his apartment.

“Y’all hungry?” Tyler asks, and they’re hockey players coming off a training camp.

“Oh hell yes,” Jamie says, and waves the guys to seats at the island and helps Tyler serve out the chili. There’s at least a gallon of it, filling the biggest pot Jamie’s kitchen came with almost to the rim. Between the four of them they put it away in ten minutes, down to wiping the bowls with the slices of garlic toast.

“Video games now?” Tom asks, and Tyler goes to get it all turned on while Jamie gets the dishes in the sink.

Jamie lets Tyler sit out the first rotation of players, and then hands him a controller. And then it’s on, the competition fierce, Tyler’s knee bumping Jamie’s every time he needs a little advantage and they’re playing against each other. He’s just glad they didn’t put money on this. Three hours go by before Jamie’s stomach protests for attention. Tyler orders pizza and volunteers to run down and get it from the delivery guy while he’s walking Marshall. He seems…relaxed, happy even, and Jamie is so amazingly relieved to see it.

It’s a good day, and after the pizza is gone the guys take their leave. Tyler breaks down the pizza boxes and Jamie brings the empty cups back to the kitchen. It’s so fucking domestic it makes his face ache with smiling.

“What?” Tyler asks, but he’s half-smiling too, suspicious but playful.

“This was fun,” Jamie says, and Tyler cocks his head.

“Yeah?”

He’s right there and Jamie takes a step towards him, then two. Tyler doesn’t give up any ground, despite having empty room behind him. “Yeah,” Jamie murmurs as his hands settle on Tyler’s hips. He leans in, and Tyler isn’t leaning away, is, in fact, watching Jamie’s mouth with open anticipation, so he’s guessing it’s good for both of them.

Marshall makes a little yelp-whine and scrambles for her crate just a second before there’s a knock-knock-knock on the door.

Tyler scowls and presses his lips tight. “Don’t answer it,” he says, and Jamie frowns in his confusion.

“What?” he lets go of Tyler’s waist and heads for the door, because clearly one of the guys must have left their phone or something, and it would be bad manners to leave them standing when they know Jamie must still be home.

He doesn’t recognize the guy on the other side of the door, nearly Jamie’s height, short stylish hair, polo shirt, dress slacks. He’s turned half-away from the door, watching down the hall, starts talking before he looks at Jamie, “Look, I just wanted to…” he turns towards the door then, starts in surprise when it’s obviously not who he was expecting there.

“Oh. I. Sorry, wrong door.” He looks past Jamie, and just instinctively, Jamie doesn’t want this guy’s eyes on Tyler. He takes a step, fills the man’s sight line.

“They all look the same, don’t they?” the guys says, forces a laugh.

“Yeah, I guess they do,” Jamie says, “No problem.” He closes the door in the guy’s face, frowns and then locks it.

“Jamie…” Tyler breathes, and he sounds shaken, nothing at all like the happy kid he was five minutes ago.

“What the fuck?” Jamie asks, because that? That was weird.

“It’s not what you think,” Tyler says, holding the kitchen towel in both hands.

“I’m not thinking anything,” Jamie says, and something has happened, something big. Tyler seems young, suddenly, vulnerable in a way he never has before, even with Jamie slamming him against a brick wall. “Who was that guy?”

Tyler sighs but none of the tension goes out of him. “Just some asshole from down the hall. He just. He tried. To talk me into going to his place. Tried to give me beer and stuff. But I didn’t. I swear to god, Jamie, I didn’t.”

Jamie kind of wants to go back to the door, to see if he can grab that asshole before he can get back to his place and pound his fucking face in. Tyler though, he’s freaked out and Jamie isn’t leaving him like that.

“It’s okay,” he says, and steps towards Tyler.

Tyler takes two long strides to the side, putting the island between them.

“I’m serious,” Tyler says, and his eyes dart to the door.

Jamie is pretty sure he could just go over the damn thing and grab him, but that’s not going to do any good at all. He puts his hands on the granite, forces himself to stand still, to show he’s fucking listening when he wants to be _doing_ something.

“I didn’t,” Tyler says, “I didn’t want to; I didn’t need to. I didn’t let him in. I didn’t go to his place.”

“It’s okay,” Jamie says again, uselessly. “I believe you. I’m not mad at you. I promise. It’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Tyler takes a step back from the island, away from the convenient obstacle to keep between them. His hands are fisted at his side, and he’s just about shaking from fear and anger. His eyes though, his eyes are begging Jamie to be telling the truth, to not hurt him.

Jamie walks up to him, slower than he did just a few minutes ago. Tyler flinches at the touch of Jamie’s hand on the back of his neck, but he doesn’t pull away. Jamie wraps him in a hug, the only thing he knows to do, and Tyler leans in, lets out a slow shuddering breath even though his back is still rigid under Jamie’s hands.

“You’re okay,” Jamie breathes, “You’re okay now.”

=======================

Tyler tolerates the hug for less than half a minute and then he takes a sharp breath, pulls back.

“I’m good,” he says, looking down, looking anywhere but at Jamie. His jaw works and he shrugs out of Jamie’s touch. He needs to breathe, needs some fucking space.

“I’m just gonna…” he nods towards Jamie’s bathroom, half turning away but keeping Jamie in his peripheral vision. Jamie reaches for him, slow enough that Tyler can twist away from the touch, and he doesn’t follow as Tyler escapes to the other room.

Tyler closes the door behind him, winces as it’s louder than he expected. He throws the lock, but a door like this won’t keep a man like Jamie out if he really wants to go through it. It’s quiet though; Jamie isn’t forcing it, isn’t knocking. Tyler takes a shaky breath and runs his hands over his face.

Fuck. It’s fucking fucked. He just…it was going so well. Jamie’s friends seemed chill, and Marshall was doing so good at her house training and everybody liked the chili. And now…fuck Mark in his stupid yuppy ass. Tyler can’t breathe, can’t get his head together. He knows—he knows Jamie is wondering now. If Tyler is a slut like Mark thought he was. If he’s fucking people in Jamie’s building, in his bed.

He needs…space, and space doesn’t come for free. He digs under the cabinet, gets the money out of the roll and stuffs it in his pockets. Takes a deep breath to center himself. He doesn’t think Jamie will stop him, not if he thinks Tyler is coming back. He’ll walk through, say he needs some air. Grab his phone and charger from the island and leave his backpack as a sacrifice to getting the fuck out. The money will get him a cab, a night’s hotel and replace everything he’s leaving behind, easy.

Okay, one more breath. And a third. Then he’s moving, his stride as casual as he can make it, stepping out of the bathroom like he’s on a mission.

Jamie is sitting on the couch, Marshall in his lap, shoulders hunched in, looking as small as a man his size ever can.

“Hey,” he says when Tyler comes out. He’s never been a loud guy, and now he’s even quieter. “Did that asshole hurt our dog?” He sounds like a little kid, begging Tyler to tell him good news even if it’s a lie.

There’s a lot that Tyler could handle Jamie believing of him, but not this and Tyler pauses in his flight to the door.

“No. Jamie, no. I would have fought him. He just. He was pissed off and I was scared and Marshall didn’t know whether to bite him or run.”

Jamie nods and lets Marshall lick his face even though he’s been working hard to break her of the habit.

“I don’t…” his voice breaks and he goes silent, starts over after a breath. Tyler stands and waits, trapped between the gut-deep urge to get away from a situation he can’t control and the desire to hear what Jamie needs to say.

“I keep feeling like I should have been able to keep you safe,” Jamie decides on at last. “I should have been here. But I can’t be here. Not all the time.”

“We were safe,” Tyler says, a little slower, because maybe Jamie didn’t get it last time. “I kept him out. I made him think I was underage and was gonna call the cops and he left.” He frowns, but Jamie isn’t looking at him.

The desperate instinct to run run run has quieted to a low disquiet in the back of Tyler’s head and he sits down on the far arm of one of the chairs.

“I’ll call the apartment complex tomorrow,” Jamie says and Tyler tries to follow what he’s thinking. “Make sure they have you on the paperwork as allowed to be here. And I’ll let them know you’ve had problems with another resident. I had a baseball bat in the closet; I put it by the door so you’ll have it if you need it.”

“Jamie,” Tyler sighs. “Look. Shit happens. This wasn’t on you.”

He thinks Jamie will argue more, but he just nods and holds Marshall.

“Hey,” says Tyler, “She probably needs her bedtime walk. You coming down with us?”

“Yeah,” Jamie looks up then, dark eyes deep and worried still. “I…The stuff you were saying. I want you to know I don’t think I own you. You haven’t made me any promises. I wouldn’t like it if you were having sex with other people, but I don’t have the right to tell you what you can and can’t do. I wouldn’t.”

“Okay.” Tyler isn’t sure what else to say to that, what the hell Jamie could want to hear from him. It’s like Jamie is giving him a chance to make a commitment he can’t keep. “Come on, get your shoes and I’ll get the leash.”

They get ready and head down. Jamie is cautiously tactile, fingers reaching towards Tyler’s in the elevator down, tugging the hem of Tyler’s shirt as they come back up. They get back to the apartment, back to home, and Jamie dares to put his hands on Tyler’s waist, murmurs “Is this okay?” but he’s already drawing Tyler in for another hug, like he isn’t the one who needs it more now.

It feels good now, not stifling. Tyler breathes into the embrace, feels Jamie relaxing against him. Listens to Marshall’s nails clicking on the hardwood flooring as she mills around.

“Will you stay tonight?” Jamie asks, swallows hard and stays so close Tyler can’t see his face. “You can sleep wherever you want. I’ll…wherever. Sleep on the couch if you want.”

Tyler groans his frustration and shoves Jamie back a step, hands in the middle of Jamie’s chest then grabbing onto his shirtfront when Jamie tries to turn away.

“What the fuck?” Tyler asks, because seriously, “Where the fuck is this coming from?”

Jamie’s lower lip puffs out and Tyler kind of wants to bite it, and not in a sexy way.

“You said you didn’t go with that guy because you didn’t need to. I thought…I don’t know if you think you need to do the stuff you do with me. The sleeping together and the. The sex.”

The fine points of that conversation are kind of lost to the adrenaline of the moment, but it’s the kind of thing Tyler vaguely remembers saying. He feels the heat rising in his cheeks and hates it, that he let himself sound like a hooker.

“Fuck you,” he cuts, but he’s not really pissed at Jamie, not this time. “I can fuck. Like because I want to. If I like somebody.”

Jamie closes his eyes like Tyler said the wrong thing, his face tight like it hurts to hear it. “But not always.”

“Fuck you,” Tyler says again. “You don’t get to fucking judge the shit I’ve done, okay? You don’t…”

“I’m not!” Jamie cuts in, “No, I just…I have to know. What it was with me. Why you would want…”

Tyler reins himself in, because another ‘Fuck you’ would be less than productive.

“Would you have kicked me out?” he asks instead, and he knows the answer.

“No!” Jamie’s denial is little more than a whisper.

“Then I didn’t need to,” Tyler says. “And if I didn’t need to, and I did it anyway, then I wanted to.”

Jamie stares at the floor and chews his lower lip.

“Jamie,” Tyler says, gentle but firm. “If you can’t believe in that, then I gotta go, man. I can’t…this is too fucked up otherwise. Like. You can’t go back and make yourself crazy putting thoughts in my head that I wasn’t thinking. You know?”

Jamie is quiet for a long time and Tyler is already planning his exit in his head. At least he’ll be able to take his bag, say a real goodbye to Marshall. It’s easier now, but he wants it so much less.

“Yeah,” Jamie finally says, quiet. “If you tell me you wanted the stuff we did, I won’t call you a liar.” He takes another breath and Tyler is about to reach for him. “But you have to believe me back. That there doesn’t have to be…” he makes a vague gesture that takes in the entire apartment, “Sex or sleeping or whatever. Anything. And you can still stay here, and help with Marshall and she’s still part yours and…”

And it’s adorable that Jamie thinks that, and if Tyler didn’t enjoy all the sex they had, he might be tempted to test it. Instead he reaches up and grabs Jamie by the back of the neck, pulls him down as Tyler stands a little taller and smashes their mouths together.

“Will you shut the fuck up?” he asks after he’s done. It wasn’t really a kiss, more an impatient press of lips against each other.

“Okay,” Jamie sighs, and he sounds relieved. “So…”

“Can we go to bed? Please?” He doesn’t want to run until he sees daylight anymore, but he needs room to think, room to breathe, and bed works as well as anything.

And Jamie, thank fucking god, does as Tyler asks. Puts Marshall in her crate and brushes his teeth.

Tyler is under the covers by the time Jamie gets in, jeans traded for sweats and still wearing Jamie’s shirt. His hair is all fucked from wearing the hat all night, and he feels kind of self-conscious of it, trying to finger-comb it into standing up.

“Hey.” Jamie’s stupid soft smile makes it matter a little less though, and Tyler closes his eyes as Jamie climbs into bed and runs his ridiculously big hand over Tyler’s cheek. “It’ll be okay,” he promises, and Tyler doesn’t know if he means the thing with Mark showing up, or how it is between them. It’s easy, so fucking easy, to let Jamie say it, to believe that however it ends up, Jamie will at least _try_ and that’s a hell of a lot more than most people Tyler’s ever known would do.

======================

Jamie falls asleep with Tyler wrapped safe in his arms and wakes up to him gently untangling himself and sliding out of bed. The sun is just starting to peek through the blinds, and Jamie groans.

“Where y’ goin’?” he mumbles, and Tyler pushes him back down when he tries to draw him back down.

“Marshall. She needs out.”

Jamie hmms. “Don’t hear her.”

“If you wait to hear her, she’ll learn to whine to wake you up.”

Jamie blinks, because he hadn’t thought of that. “Huh. When did you…” but Tyler is already out of the bedroom. By the time Jamie drags himself out of bed, the apartment is quiet, Marshall and Tyler gone. He fusses with the coffee maker, and pokes through the fridge, though he doesn’t think he’s ambitious enough to cook this morning. He digs out the take-out menus he’s collected in the last few weeks, looking for anything that might deliver this early, but none of them are 24-hour.

Tyler might know someplace that delivers breakfast, he thinks as he stretches out on the couch, listening to the coffee perk and the air conditioner hum.

He wakes up at the sound of the key in the lock, Marshall’s nails on the floor, Tyler’s footsteps.

“You didn’t have to get up,” Tyler says when Jamie drags himself upright. “Go back to bed. She’s set for a while.”

“That was like…have you been walking her this early every morning?”

Tyler shrugs and takes the leash off her collar, lets her loose in the room. “She’s doing good at about seven hours, as long as I take away her water dish an hour before last-walks the night before. I walked her every two hours yesterday, and she hasn’t had any accidents. I was going to push that to two and a half today, see how that goes.”

Jamie kind of boggles, doing the math, the number of days he’s been gone, the sheer number of trips up and down the elevator Tyler must have made. “No wonder she was pissing everywhere when I was the one walking her.”

Tyler looks a little embarrassed, and he so rarely does. “I um. Went to the library?”

“Oh. That’s. I mean that’s awesome? I was just kind of winging it.”

Tyler glances over, and Jamie can’t figure out if this is less confidence or less bravado.

“If she’s two months old, she should be able to go two hours. That’s what the books say.” He opens one of the kitchen drawers that Jamie rarely uses and pulls out some printed pages. He sits down on the couch, knee touching Jamie’s, and they go through the pages. Tyler points out the advice he’s circled because all the books had agreed on it. Suggestions about smaller crates and less water in the dish that he’d crossed out.

“The vet thought she might be closer to three months,” Jamie says, and Tyler nods.

“Okay. So one last day of two and a half hours and then we bump it up to three, see how she does?”

Jamie nods. “Yeah. And I’ll definitely walk her more. I haven’t had a puppy before; I was treating her like a small dog.”

He’ll walk her; he’s willing to pull his weight, except— “I’ve got to head up to Frisco tomorrow morning. Probably gone half of the day.”

“Work?” Tyler asks, and Jamie sees his eyes track the bruise again.

“Yeah.”

Tyler nods twice, slow, and looks away. “So. Am I not supposed to ask? The whole going away for days, coming back banged up and hanging out with foreign guys? Because if I’m not supposed to, I won’t.”

Jamie—god help him, he tries not to laugh, lips pressing together over a grin, because put that way it sounds like something wrong, something sinister.

“No! No, you can ask. I…I just feel stupid talking about it. Like I’m bragging or something. It’s not—I haven’t even played the first real game.”

Tyler’s eyebrow goes up and he’s still waiting for an answer to the question he didn’t ask outright.

“I…when they guys asked if you played hockey? It’s because I do. They do. The three of us. Play hockey.”

Tyler cocks his head. “Like professionally?”

Jamie nods, his face starting to warm, but he’s not trying to stifle the smile anymore. He doesn’t want to brag, but he really is proud of this, how far he’s gotten.

“Yeah. With the Stars.”

Tyler blinks. “The Stars. Are you fucking kidding me?”

“No?”

“Wow,” Tyler says, blinks as he digests that. “Dude. I don’t blame you for not telling me. I wouldn’t have told me.”

Jamie shakes his head. “No, it’s not like that. I just. Didn’t know when to bring it up. And I didn’t want to jinx it.”

Tyler nods but Jamie isn’t sure if he believes him or not. “I won’t tell anybody,” he assures Jamie. He looks him over, considering, and Jamie fights the urge to look away.

“So I got a blowie from a fucking NHL player?”

Jamie laughs, because Tyler is so ridiculous. “I haven’t even played my first game yet.”

Tyler pffs that thought away, pushes the dog-training printouts to the side and straddles Jamie’s lap. “You are going to blow their minds,” he promises, leans in and nudges their lips together, gentle like Jamie likes it. “You’re gonna be amazing.” He rolls his hips against Jamie’s, already hard.

“Hockey,” Tyler says, and that dangerous glint is in his eyes, the one that Jamie is learning to associate with getting something amazing. Or terrifying. “So you do the locker room thing.”

“It’s not like I _look_!” Jamie protests and Tyler smirks.

“You’re a stronger man than I ever was, then. But-- I mean you get naked with bunches of guys. Shower naked with them.”

“No!” Jamie says again, hides his face in against Tyler’s neck. “Not like _that_.”

“You wanna shower naked with one guy? Like _that_? You wanna shower with me?” Tyler asks, low and sexy warm and Jamie clenches tight at the back of his shirt. On the one hand, naked Tyler, and he’s seen most of him, just never all at once. But on the other, he can’t exactly shower with clothes on, and the lighting in the bathroom is particularly unmerciful. He imagines his body next to Tyler’s, the sharp contrast between them.

“I…” any other words are too hard to compose, much less get out. He licks his lips and looks up and that little flicker-frown goes over Tyler’s face. He thinks he fucked up, wants to apologize. Isn’t even sure what he did wrong so he arches up against Tyler, leans up to kiss him again.

“Wait,” Tyler says, “Just—wait, wait.”

Jamie freezes, because if this is Tyler backing off sex, now that he knows he doesn’t have to, Jamie will stand by his word. Tyler is literally on top of him though, and there’s no pulling away, no way to flip a switch and turn off the erection that Tyler can certainly feel. He takes his hands off Tyler though, digs his fingers into the couch and waits, like Tyler asked.

“That thing you said last night,” Tyler starts, firm and serious. “About how you wouldn’t kick me out if we stopped fucking.”

Jamie nods. He isn’t surprised. “I remember. It’s okay.”

But Tyler doesn’t get off him.

“You know that goes both ways, right?”

And that’s…Jamie doesn’t need that. He’s not the one who’s had to do things he didn’t want to survive.

“It’s okay,” he says, expects that to be the end of it, but Tyler clamps his knees on either side of Jamie’s hips, grabs onto his shoulders.

“I am a selfish shit,” Tyler says, absolutely certain, “And I never know when to fucking quit and sometimes I want to break you open, Jamie. I want to leave a fucking mark so deep no tattoo would ever cover it up. You can’t…don’t let me fuck you up, okay? Just. If you’re really saying no about something, make sure I hear it, okay?”

Jamie puts his hands on Tyler’s sides, wants to draw him in for a hug if he thought Tyler would allow it.

“You don’t have to give me everything I ask for,” Tyler confesses. “If I bail, it won’t be over this. I promise. We can just…however you like it.”

Jamie isn’t sure he believes that Tyler could force him to do something that would damage him, that Tyler would. But he can see that even the idea of it scares the shit out of him.

“I’ll make sure you hear it,” he says, and Tyler’s shoulders sag with relief. “But I…remember what you said, that it’s seeing other people turned on that’s sexy? I want to know what turns you on. What you want to do. What you like. And then I can decide what I’ll do, okay?”

Tyler nods, bites his lower lip. “Can we just. Like this for a minute?”

“Yeah,” Jamie says, and rubs his hands up and down Tyler’s back. “Yeah, of course.”

He pets Tyler until Tyler relaxes into the good feelings of their bodies touching again, the frown between his eyes smooths. Until he leans in and kissed Jamie slow and soft. Rubs his hard-on against Jamie’s through their clothes hot and urgent.

“How can I get you off?” Tyler whispers, “What do you want?”

“Bed?” Jamie asks, and Tyler climbs off his lap, leads the way there. He stretches out on the bed and he looks vulnerable here for the first time, letting Jamie lean over him, kiss his lips and jawline and throat.

It is scary as hell, to have Tyler laid out under him, to be the one checking Tyler’s eyes for fear or hesitation as he slips his fingers under his waistband and draws his pants down, as he bares Tyler’s cock and russet pubic hair and unbelievably pale and smooth thighs.

“C’mon,” Tyler breathes, “Whip it out,” and Jamie pulls his own pants down then, far enough. The skin of Tyler’s thigh feels amazing against his dick, and Jamie humps in against him.

Tyler’s breath catches and his hand comes up to Jamie’s shoulder, pushing him back.

“Don’t…don’t crush me,” Tyler says, even though Jamie knows he wasn’t, that all his weight was on his arms except for where they were rubbing against each other.

“Okay,” he says though, and lets Tyler roll them onto their sides, facing each other, feels him line their dicks up and push hard against Jamie.

Tyler wraps his free hand around both of them, “So fucking thick,” he groans, “Jamie, c’mere, c’mon gimme your hand, help me, c’mon, jerk us off.”

He moves his hand and lets Jamie grip them, and that was the most brilliant idea of the week, the way they fit so good in Jamie’s larger palm. Tyler wraps his hand over Jamie’s and tightens the grip to his liking, guides the stroke, the pace, slow where Jamie would dive in and get it done, dragging it out until Jamie is shaking, sweating, gasping his fucking name.

Then Tyler rolls over on top of him, pushes Jamie back into the bed and fucks hard and fast into the tube of his hand. It’s messy and awkward, pants around their knees and their feet tangled in sheets already displaced from the night sleeping together. Jamie clenches his jaw and curls his toes and holds back, holds back until Tyler spills and it’s hot and slick and Tyler goes mostly-still but stays there, lets Jamie rub against his dick, lets him come against him.

Tyler collapses when they’re done, panting hard and twitching through the aftershocks. “Wanna fuck you,” he slurs against Jamie’s neck, and another full-body twitch shivers through him. “Wanna be inside you. Want. Fuck.”

Jamie slithers his hand out from between them, wipes it off on the back of Tyler’s shirt as he holds onto him. The idea—Tyler fucking him. It’s like the shower offer but even more, bigger. The thought of it makes his asshole clench, his dick try to throb back to life. But it’s terrifying too, being that vulnerable, that open, and if Tyler doesn’t want him after, he’s not sure he would ever dare to let anybody else inside like this, so far in his heart they could ruin him.

“Sorry,” Tyler whispers, “I won’t, I won’t, but I think about it, Jamie, sorry.”

Jamie has no fucking idea what the hell is happening in Tyler’s head, just that he’s clinging like he’s trying to press inside Jamie’s skin over the entire length of their bodies, like he’s trying to tuck his head into Jamie’s neck until they’re one person.

“Shhhh,” he soothes, and rubs his back again. “Maybe we could…”

But Tyler shakes his head, shuts up and holds on, and it was a shitty night and early morning. If Tyler doesn’t want to talk, he doesn’t have to. Jamie pulls a sheet half-over them and they drowse again for a while until Marshall gets them up, whining for attention.

“Mmm. What are you making me for breakfast?” Tyler asks as he rolls off, their bodies sticking together in a totally gross kind of way. Jamie makes a mental note to never ever fall asleep sticky again.

“IHoP, Denny’s or Cafe Brazil,” Jamie offers, and Tyler snickers.

“Did you go to cooking school for that or what?”

Jamie ruffles his already-squashed hair and Tyler pouts and gets tangled up in his pants, nearly falls on his ass getting out of bed.

“Hey,” Jamie says, feeling suddenly warm, suddenly soft. “That was…I liked that. A lot. Thanks.”

Tyler huffs and rolls his eyes and turns away, but Jamie catches the smile on his lips, and thinks maybe Tyler hasn’t had enough people noticing when he does something good.

=====================

Given the choice, Tyler picks IHoP, because seriously, cheesecake-stuffed French toast. Jamie teases him that he eats like a five-year-old and Tyler, sitting on the other side of the booth, stretches casually and flexes his muscles and asks if he should go on a diet.

Jamie turns pink and changes the subject, talks about the training camp they’d done in Fort Worth, gives Tyler the rundown on all the guys he played with, their strengths and weaknesses. It’s been years for Tyler, since he laced up and felt the weight of a stick in his hands. There’s a moment when it hits him, that he’d be gearing up for his draft year right now, if things had gone differently, if he had been able to keep out of trouble, keep his dick in his pants.

He stuffs a big bite of sugary sweetness in his mouth and makes a face that gets him a full-on laugh from Jamie.

Tyler is still chewing when Jamie’s phone rings and the place is empty and quiet enough, late on a Monday morning, that he answers it at the table.

“Jordie! Hey. What’s up? Nah, just breakfast with Tyler.” There’s a long pause then, and Jamie rolls his eyes. Tyler can hear a man’s lecturing tone on the other end, but can’t catch the words.

“Jordie,” Jamie finally cuts in, exasperated but fond. “We’re eating here. What did you call for?”

Tyler pokes his food and watches the play of emotion over Jamie’s face, the hint of trepidation, the intense way he listens, the way he lights up at the end, delighted and…relieved. “Oh shit! You’re signed? When do you fly in? Are they putting you up in an apartment? Mmhmm. Uh huh. Yeah. Yeah, I can pick you up. Text me the details. Yeah. Uh huh. Congratulations man. This is. Really cool.”

He hangs up and Tyler tries to stay casual. Doesn’t know if he should ask or not, if it’s any of his business.

“That’s my brother,” Jamie says, and Tyler isn’t surprised, the way Jamie had talked to him. “He plays, too. With the Grizzlies in the BCHL last season. He just signed with the Allen Americans. He’s coming down later this week.”

Tyler smiles because he’s supposed to, because Jamie is. This is good news for Jamie, even if Tyler isn’t sure how this is going to work, what Jamie’s brother will think of him.

“Awesome!” he says, and Jamie grins.

“He’s going to be mostly up in Allen, but if we both have a half-day off or something, he can come hang out, or I can go up. We weren’t sure, if he was going to be able to sign in time for the season. He sent out feelers when I came down for prospect camp, but didn’t look at it seriously until they told me I was going to be here and not with the Texas Stars.”

Tyler cuts off a piece of crust and chews on it. “He’s coming to Texas to watch your back?”

Jamie smiles. “Pretty much. Just so I can have family somewhere within driving distance, for emergencies and whatever. A familiar face to see every now and then. I’ve never been too far from home. Kelowna was only like a six hour drive and that felt like forever away.”

Tyler doesn’t know whether to tease him for being such a homebody or envy him having someone who would reshape their life to take care of him, to make sure he can succeed to the best of his ability. Someone who’ll make sure Jamie doesn’t get taken advantage of by gold-digging assholes like Tyler.

He eats, because fuck it, the food is here and it’s free and things are _changing_ already. He knows better than to waste a good thing.

“Hey,” Jamie says, and Tyler is starting to hate that gentle tone. He knows that he’s showing things when he hears it, stuff he’d rather hide.

“I told him. I…came out.” Jamie’s voice is low but his cheeks are pink and he’s smiling. “It was okay. It was good. He. He’s my brother and he loves me and it doesn’t matter to him. It’ll be okay, him living closer. I know he’ll like you. The guys thought you were cool. Cooler than me, even.”

Tyler scoffs “Like that’s hard,” but a smile plays at his lips. He wants it to be fine. Wants Jordie to like him. He just doesn’t want to fuck up.

“He knows about us fucking and stuff?” he asks, and that flush on Jamie’s cheeks goes even darker.

“Kind of? He knows I like you. Not that we’re…stuff. Not in so many words.”

Tyler nods and eats.

“Trust me,” Jamie asks, and Tyler says “Okay.” He’ll try. That’s all Jamie can ask, right?

They finish eating and run some errands. Jamie needs a house-warming gift for his brother now, and takes it hilariously serious. They go to like a dozen stores before Tyler drags him into a Starbucks, points to the ridiculously overpriced coffee makers on sale and tells Jamie if he isn’t happy with that for the gift then he can finish the shopping on his own.

He’s a little surprised when Jamie pauses and stares and then nods. “It’s perfect.”

They go back and walk Marshall. Three hours and she’s held it, and Tyler thinks they’ve really turned a corner with the house-training. That Jamie won’t have a reason to get rid of her, that she’ll be fine, no matter what happens.

They go use the gym downstairs and then come up to shower, order Thai delivery and watch a movie. Go to bed and Tyler blows Jamie in the dim glow of the city lights filtering through the blinds. Fucks Jamie’s mouth with two fingers while he jerks off on his bare chest.

Tyler cooks and they eat breakfast together the next morning, rushed a little because Jamie needs to get up to Frisco.

And then Jamie gets in his truck and goes, leaves Tyler and Marshall and an empty apartment again.

It’s a relief when Tyler plugs in his phone and it buzzes with stored-up messages.

 _check in_ is his dad’s monthly two-word order. He wants to send back a ‘fuck you’ or ‘go to hell’ but the last time he got mouthy they shut his phone off for two weeks and shit is hard enough with a way to communicate with people. Without it, he ended up sleeping outdoors three times in two weeks and it fucking sucked.

 _k_ he sends back, and it’s short but won’t get him in trouble.

The next message on his phone is more welcome. _got $ for tile can you help out?_ from Kendra and Marco, and he smiles at the phone.

 _u trust me w tile?_ he asks, because painting a feature wall or a little light demolition like he’s done for them is one thing. This sounds…technical.

It’s half an hour before he gets a reply, and he uses the time to get the kitchen cleaned up, make the bed, change the towels in the bathroom.

 _ill show u how. U do the work_ is the response and he thinks if they’re willing to risk it, he’s willing to learn.

 _can u touch up my color?_ he asks, and the immediate response is _yes. U need a ride?_.

He gives her the address and tells her to look for the grocery store. He packs up Marshall’s food and snacks and favorite chew toys and goes down to meet her.

Kendra picks him up in the parking lot in her little VW Beetle, coos over Marshall as the puppy scrambles into the car. She grabs Tyler’s head as he sits down in her front seat, parts the hair of the Mohawk so she can check his roots.

“Well I’ve got my work cut out for me,” she says as she lets him up, and he grins. “Marco’s cooking tonight; will you eat veggie burgers?”

“Have I ever turned down food?” he asks, and she gives him a critical once-over.

“You’re looking really good,” she says, like that explains anything.

They drive to Home Depot, smuggle Marshall in in Tyler’s backpack so Kendra can point out to him the boxes of tile and adhesive and grout they’ll need, spacers and cutters, sponges and spreaders. The orange-vest in that department comes by once, to see if they’ve got everything, but he can’t take his eyes off Tyler’s hair for long enough to listen to Kendra’s reply. It’s just lucky that she’s been there before, scouting and planning. Tyler loads the boxes of tile in the trunk, trying to hurry because she can only stretch out a long lunch so long.

They go back to the house then, a 1920’s bungalow in the M Streets neighborhood. Kendra and Marco bought it cheap, according to the story they told him last time, and they have a cycle of saving up enough for one renovation at a time that’s going to end them up with an investment that’s worth twice what they paid for it. Neither of them is really physical enough for some of the harder projects though, and they’re both intensely busy with their actual jobs that let them buy a house in this neighborhood.

Tyler has done three projects for them since he’s been in Dallas— digging out some ancient holly bushes, stripping some rotten siding off the garage, and repainting the accent walls in the living and dining rooms. They let him sleep on their couch for a couple days, feed him up and Kendra usually gets some stuff to do his hair, dyes and gels and whatever fun thing they can agree on. He thinks that if he ever got in a bind, got hurt bad or sick or something where he would be outdoors with no chance of fixing it, that he could crash here for a few days even if he couldn’t work. He wouldn’t ask to without extreme circumstances, because they’re building a dream here, and it’s really not a big enough house for three people anyway, but it feels good to have the possible backup plan.

Kendra doesn’t have much time before she has to get back to work, but she dumps him and the supplies off at the house, lets him in and shows him how to start taking up the old tile before she grabs a granola bar and heads back out.

He puts Marshall in the tub so she’ll be safe and out of the way, rolls the ball around the curved backrest part a few times so she learns to play alone, plugs his phone in to charge, and then he gets to work. It’s not exactly tricky stuff. Chisel, hammer, put the bits in the bucket. He kind of gets into a groove, and Marshall is chewing one of her rawhides and not being needy. He doesn’t have to think, so he doesn’t. Just gets lost in the motion, like a good workout at the gym.

The chirp of an arriving text message surprises him and he nearly gets his hand with the hammer. He sets down his tools and picks up the phone.

Shit. Jamie.

 

===================

Jamie goes to practice. It’s still pre-season and the coach runs them hard, long drills and lots of yelling. That’s fine though; that’s hockey. He puts everything he has into it, stays until it’s just him and the other rookies picking up pucks.

After, him and half a dozen of the younger guys go out for lunch at Chipotle down the street from the iceplex. He picks up a couple burritos to go when he’s on his way out, to bring back home for Tyler.

He gets back to the apartment and the place is quiet. As often as Tyler walks Marshall, it could just be that, so Jamie puts away the food and does a few exercises on the guitar and waits. Waits and Tyler doesn’t come back. He gets up to get another Gatorade, and doesn’t kick Marshall’s water dish over again, because Marshall’s water dish isn’t there, and neither is the one for food.

That…he’s not sure how to take it. He doesn’t think Tyler would steal their co-owned dog and disappear. Tyler hadn’t seemed pissed off at him when he left, or scared or upset or anything.

He takes out his phone and sends a quick text, a _hey where are you?_

He stares at the words he sent and they look wrong. Needy or possessive or both. Shit. He follows up with a quick _just wondering if marshall is with you and if everything is okay_.

 _yeah_ Tyler sends back. _at a friends house. Gonna stay here cpl days. U wanna come get marsh?_

Jamie doesn’t know what that means. Like individually the words all make sense, but why did Tyler leave? Why does he want to stay away? He doesn’t know what he could have done wrong, but he feels like he has.

 _if you want me to_ he tries, but the medium is just too imprecise for this. He hits the call button and listens to it ring twice before Tyler picks up.

“Hello?” Tyler sounds surprised, off-balance to have gotten a call. Maybe he should have stuck to texting.

“Hey. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Of course. Why?”

“I just got home, and there’s no note, no dog. You took her dishes. I thought…” something stupid. He made a big deal out of nothing and is making himself look like an insecure loser.

“Hey. No.” Tyler’s voice goes soft, gentle. “I just got some friends that needed a favor so I’m helping them do some stuff on their house. I didn’t want to leave her alone until you got home.”

“You’re staying there tonight?” Jamie asks. “I’m picking Jordie up at the airport tomorrow, and I was thinking the three of us could have dinner?”

“Yeah, I dunno. I don’t know how long tile takes. You want to come get Marshall and I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know if I can make it?”

“Okay,” Jamie says, but he isn’t thrilled. “Just text me the address.”

“Okay.” And Tyler sighs. “I’m sorry I didn’t leave a note,” he says. “I really was coming back.”

Jamie nods, alone in his apartment. “I’ll head out as soon as I get the address,” he says and hangs up. He groans and presses the heels of his hands against his forehead. Fuck. He should have accepted the apology, should have said it was no big deal. Something, anything.

It takes long enough for the address to come that he’s almost thinking about checking in with Tyler again, making sure he didn’t forget.

 _sorry_ comes after the street name, _nbdy home but me had to walk to the corner and find where I am_

Jamie hates it a little, how relieved he is to get Tyler’s words. _on my way_ he texts back, and gathers Tyler’s dinner out of the fridge to bring to him

The directions his phone gives him takes him to the other side of 75, through a couple intersections where both streets start with an M. The houses are old here, cute and small, with old trees and the kind of driveways that are like two sidewalks with a strip of grass between them.

Tyler is waiting outside when Jamie pulls up to park at the curb, Marshall on her leash beside him. He looks okay, looks relaxed, sweat darkening the collar and armpits of his shirt, his hair falling to the side because of the humidity, white dust flaking his shirt and forearms and a smear of it over his left cheek. He’s smiling though, as he comes up to the passenger side door and lets himself in, lifts Marshall up into the seat ahead of him.

“Tile fucking sucks,” Tyler says, but he’s grinning.

Jamie passes him the Chipotle bag, and enjoys the look of surprise and then pleasure that goes over Tyler’s face. Nothing is messed up. Tyler legitimately has something he wants to be doing, and as much as Jamie wishes he could have Tyler waiting in his apartment to spend every free minute together, he can kind of get that that’s not the healthiest existence for either of them.

Tyler digs in the bag and rips back the foil wrapper and takes a bite of a burrito like he was starving. Jamie gestures to the Gatorade in the cup-holder and Tyler makes an appreciative noise at that, drinks and takes another bite and finally leans back and slows down.

“How was your work thing?” Tyler asks, and Jamie smiles, because hockey is good, hockey is easy. He tells Tyler all about practice, how good it feels, how much potential he can sense in this team, how much he wants it, to play and win and matter. He’s not sure how much Tyler played, if it was just casual stuff like a huge percentage of Canadian boys or if it was a little more serious, but he follows along, smiles in the right places.

Jamie…kind of wishes he could invite him to watch the next practice, to be there in the stands. That’s all kinds of a bad idea though, unless he’s ready to out himself and Tyler, and he’s not. He won’t ask Tyler to pretend they aren’t fucking, aren’t…whatever kind of together they are.

Tyler finishes the first burrito, sitting by Jamie in the cool air conditioning of his truck. He goes to pass the second one back, but Jamie waves him off. “Keep it in case you want it later,” he says, and Tyler smiles.

“Okay. Cool. Thanks. I should…” he points at one of the houses with his thumb, and Jamie isn’t looking forward to going back to the apartment alone, but he nods.

“Call me tomorrow, yeah? Either way?”

Tyler nods and sucks his upper lip between his teeth. Marshall squirms on Jamie’s lap, trying to get at the stuff that smells so good.

“I will,” Tyler promises, empties the last of his drink and tucks the bag of dinner under his arm.

“Thanks for this,” he says, and the more shyly, “Thanks for coming over. It was good to see you.”

“Yeah,” Jamie agrees, “No problem.”

Tyler looks around, and then leans in and pecks a kiss at the corner of Jamie’s mouth, smiles like he just got away with something and hops out of the truck.

Tyler doesn’t look back, but if he did, he’d see a matching smile on Jamie’s lips.

=================

Jamie leaves Tyler and heads back to the apartment. He’s not happy to be leaving without him, but he is satisfied that Tyler isn’t in some trouble, and confident he’ll come back.

He takes Marshall on a walk, shorter than he planned because his legs are tired from the morning skate.

On the way back up, he thinks it’ll work out that he has the evening without distractions so he can clean up the apartment, keep Jordie from teasing him about it tomorrow. He walks through the door, fired up to get this done, and…notices for the first time that there’s not that much to do. His empty cup from Chipotle to throw away. Marshall’s blanket is spilling out of her crate. Other than that, the bed is made, the bathroom straightened. There are no dirty dishes anywhere.

 _thanks for cleaning up,_ he texts Tyler. He’s getting ready for bed when the reply comes.

 _no problem_ and maybe it’s not, but he thinks he needs to find a way to show that he appreciates it.

 _goodnight_ he sends back, and gets a smile in return. It’s late, so he puts Marshall up for the night, careful that he’s followed all of Tyler’s night-time instructions about when the water dish goes up and when Marshall gets her last walk of the day. He climbs into bed in boxers and a t-shirt, the smooth sheets cool against his bare legs, the lights of the city twinkling through the blinds.

He’s only had Tyler with him in this bed a few times, but it feels empty now, too much space, not enough warmth. He wonders if Tyler thought the same, sleeping here without Jamie. He misses Tyler, wonders if Tyler is missing him.

He sleeps poorly, wakes up and jerks off in the shower, eyes open and looking down his body, at the thick shape of his dick in his hand. Imagines Tyler’s hand around him, Tyler’s breath on his neck. He comes and it feels good but not satisfying, a snack when he wanted a meal.

Jordie calls as Jamie is coming out of the shower, tells him he’s at the airport in San Francisco for his layover. “See you soon,” Jamie tells him as they hang up.

He thinks about texting Tyler good morning but doesn’t want to come off as too needy, too pushy.

He walks Marshall and goes grocery shopping for some of Jordie’s favorites, walks Marshall again and then brings her with him as he drives out to the DFW airport, its tangled maze of terminals and gates.

Jordie sends him a text once he gets to baggage claim, and Jamie meets him at the door with the truck. It’s only been a couple weeks since their summer together, but it feels great to hug him, strong and solid.

“You hungry?” he asks, and Jordie grins.

They stop by Raising Cain’s for chicken since it has a patio. Jordie complains about the heat, and Jamie figures it must feel especially hot for him, landing in Texas, straight from autumn in Victoria.

“So where’s your boy toy?” Jordie asks after he’s had a chance to take the edge off his hunger.

The question hits Jamie like a fist to the sternum and he frowns. “Hey. Don’t call him that.”

Jordie frowns back and stuffs some fries in his mouth, stares at Jamie in a way that makes him want to squirm.

“Yeah?” Jordie asks, “You and him?” He doesn’t look proud, like he had after Jamie’s first time with a girl, doesn’t look happy for him.

Jamie feels his jaw clench, that stubbornness turning his spine rigid.

“He’s not a toy,” Jamie grits, and Jordie shakes his head. “He’s…he matters.”

“Jamie.” He takes a breath to gather his thoughts and that just makes it worse, that Jordie is being so careful. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Is anybody ever sure?” Jamie counters, and he feels desperate for Jordie’s support on this. “Is any… _relationship_ ever a sure thing?” The word feels strange in his mouth, too big, too real.

“I like him, Jordie. I like him a whole lot. And I know he’s had a shitty time and that has left marks, but it’s not like I’m not bringing any baggage into this either.” Even telling Jordie that much feels like a betrayal, like he’s giving up Tyler’s secrets. They are alone on the patio, the heat keeping everybody that doesn’t have a dog inside.

“I am a god-damn closeted hockey player,” Jamie says between clenched teeth, and he’s breathing too hard, his heart pounding in his chest. “He could do better. He could. He could find somebody to be happier with. I’m. I’m so fucking lucky, Jordie.”

“Okay,” Jordie cuts in, shakes his head in apology. “Okay. I won’t…I’ll give him a chance, okay? If he makes you happy, Jamie, if he’s who you want to be with and not just convenient, then I support you.”

Jamie takes a deep breath, because he knows Jordie, knows he’s not trying to piss Jamie off, despite how spectacularly he’s succeeding.

“Do I get to meet him?” Jordie asks, and Jamie shakes his head.

“I don’t know if you should, now. But I asked him to come with us to dinner, if he’s free. He’s helping some friends with a home improvement project right now.”

Jordie makes a noncommittal hmm. Jamie ducks his head and eats his lunch, wishing he’d thought to bring some of Marshall’s food for her. They drive her home after, and Jordie teases him how nice it all is, how he’s growing up, how he’s made the bigtime.

They go to Target for some stuff Jordie knows he’ll need at the new apartment next. The team has set him up with a roommate and a place to live, but his $350/week won’t get him far. He needs towels and pillows and his favorite coffee mug broke in his luggage. They get a case of beer, and Jamie feels ridiculous to have someone else buy for him.

Jamie steps in line in front of their cart, ostensibly so he can unload, but really so he’ll be in front when the total comes up. He slots his Visa in the card-reader while Jordie is showing his ID to the cashier.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Jordie grumbles, and Jamie shrugs. “It’s not a big deal, Jordie.” Their whole lives, he’s had so little opportunity to give back, to do something for his big brother. Even if he gets sent down to the Texas Stars, he’ll still be doing better than Jordie money-wise, for this year at least. It’s a lot like taking care of Tyler, the little things that don’t cost Jamie in any real way but make a big difference.

He didn’t really tell Tyler what time to call, but he gets a text around five, _sorry, can’t do dinner_ and he wants to call, wants to talk Tyler into hanging out with them, to give Jordie a chance to know him, to like him. Tyler is good with people, was great with Jamie’s teammates. If Jamie could just get the two of them in the same room, he’s sure they’d like each other, that Jordie would _get_ why Tyler is so important to Jamie.

 _okay_ Jamie sends back, _drvig Jord up tomorrow, want to come?_ and it’s not really a fair request, the three of them squeezed in the truck’s cab.

_ill call if I can go. What time?_

“Hey Jordie, what time do you want to be in Allen?”

Jordie shrugs. “Noonish?”

 _leaving around 11_ Jamie texts.

_probably not_

Jamie can take a hint. _ok_

He holds his phone, staring at the screen, but Tyler doesn’t text back.

“No company for dinner?” Jordie asks, carefully casual.

“No,” Jamie answers, puts his phone away. Tyler is his own person, and if he’s got things going on, Jamie isn’t going to pout about it. Too much.

 

======================

 

Tyler goes back in Kendra and Marco’s house and puts the burrito in the fridge, turns on the radio and gets back to work.

Marco gets home at five, leans into the bathroom and looks over Tyler’s work. “How’s it going?”

There’s not a lot in Tyler’s life he gets to be proud of, but this is something. “Good. Good. I was waiting to disconnect the toilet, because I have no clue what I’m doing, but I’ve got all the tiles off now, I’m just scraping some of the old cement down.”

“Awesome,” Marco says, “You want to keep me company while I cook?”

He’s about ready for a break, so he nods, washes up and joins Marco in the kitchen. “Can I help with anything?” he asks, and gets put to slicing tomatoes and chopping lettuce while Marco mixes up the black bean paste and herb mixture for the veggie burgers. Kendra comes in from work and kisses Marco’s cheek, goes to the bedroom and changes out of her work clothes while the patties finish cooking.

After dinner, they work on the next steps of the floor, Kendra reading instructions from a DIY book while Tyler and Marco wrestle with getting the toilet off the bolts and get the whole thing outside. It goes easier than Tyler had been expecting though, and they get most of the floor laid. Tyler places the tiles while Kendra measures and cuts, Marco trading out with her when she gets too tired from the bad position.

It’s a good night’s work, and they get the toilet back on before Tyler is too exhausted to carry it back in, but barely. He catches a shower, the tub floor gritty under his feet from the construction dust. He’s tired enough that he crashes on their couch, comfortable in the domestic coziness of it all. There is a message from Jamie, and he smiles to read it, that Jamie noticed he’d cleaned up, that he thought it was important enough to text about.

He falls asleep with a smile on his lips, his phone on the coffee table in front of him. He kind of forgets the other part of the last three times he’s stayed here, until he’s waking up in the middle of the night to Marco calling his name, “Tyler. Hey. Tyler.”

“Huh?” he sits up, and as soon as he’s visibly awake, there is a mouth against his, a hand on his crotch. It’s…it’s not bad. Not an infidelity thing—Kendra and Marco both sat him down the first night and explained it. He hadn’t minded before; an orgasm is an orgasm. Nobody here ever hurt him or did anything he said no to. But now…

“Hey,” he says, and pulls his face away. He would move Marco’s hand, but he doesn’t quite know how to without increasing the contact between them. He pulls his hips away, but the back of the couch only gives him so far to go.

“Yeah?” Marco asks, and nuzzles in against Tyler’s neck, massages his dick. Tyler’s breath catches, and he’s hard, doesn’t know how anybody could not be hard with this going on. But just because his dick is into it, doesn’t mean he wants this.

“I…” It’s so fucking hard to think. “Wait. Wait. I. There’s a Jamie. I. I have a Jamie and he. This wouldn’t make him happy.”

Marco goes still but doesn’t pull away. “What do you want, Tyler? What would make you happy?”

Tyler takes three shuddering breaths. “I want. I want to be good. I don’t want to do this.”

Marco sits back, hand finally leaving Tyler’s body. “You’re sure?”

“Sorry,” Tyler mumbles, and he feels like he broke a deal, that he came over and ate their food and slept on their couch and isn’t giving what they need.

“Hey,” Marco says, gently reproving, a vague silhouette in a dark room. “Hey, you don’t need to be sorry. It was good times, yeah?”

Tyler nods, because it had been, before.

“I’ll wait for your move, if you change your mind. Just let me know.”

“Okay,” Tyler mumbles, and he’d kind of like a hug right now, just the person he wants it from isn’t here.

Marco gets up and pads back out to the bedroom.

Tyler lies awake for a long time, talking himself out of calling Jamie to come get him. He doesn’t though, and nothing happens, nobody messes with him. Marco barely wakes him up leaving for work in the morning, and Kendra doesn’t kick him out when she gets up an hour later. She’s got the day off, so she supervises his finishing the tile.

Neither of them brings up Tyler turning Marco down the night before.

Then Tyler spends the next couple hours getting his hair buzzed on the sides and fresh-bleached on the roots of his Mohawk, layers of dye put in with rubber bands and foil bits and he’s not even sure what all Kendra has planned with this set. He’s learned not to think about the middle-parts of the operation too deeply, but it feels silly instead of sexy, and he hopes it comes out right, he hopes really hard that Jamie likes it.

Kendra won’t let him see until after she tips his head back in the kitchen sink, rinsing out the excess dye and undoing the foil crumples, unwinding the rubber bands. The water tickles, and he itches the center of his hairline in the front; his fingertips come away deep purple.

She takes a brush and hair-dryer to his head, scolds him when he winces away from the heat.

“Okay,” she says at last, “Close your eyes,” And she guides him through the house to the bathroom, gets the lights on and him in front of the mirror before she says “Open them.”

Tyler stares, for a long time. This is…this is great. The best he’s ever liked his hair, and he can’t wait for Jamie to see, can’t wait for his reaction. He wants…but shit. Jamie is hanging with his brother, and it would seriously break Tyler’s heart to put a hat over this. He just can’t.

“Thanks,” he tells Kendra, heartfelt. “This is the best. Seriously the best.”

“Glad you like it.”

“Hey, could I get a ride?” he asks, “Out to Oak Lawn?”

“Sure,” she says.

Tyler pulls out his phone, sends a quick text: _sorry, can’t do dinner_. He waits, but Jamie doesn’t question it, just asks about riding up to freakin’ Allen the next day, and there’s no way Tyler is ready to be trapped in a truck cab for an hour with someone who probably won’t like him anyway. He does the math though; if they’re leaving at eleven, Jamie can’t be home until one at the earliest.

He gathers his stuff and Kendra slips him a twenty for his work on the tile. She drops him off and he walks the mile or so left to the Cathedral of Hope, gets there before the Wednesday night service starts. The ushers greet him on his way in, and it always feels funny, the sheer amount of welcome he gets here, the open honest smiles no matter how ratty or worn he’s feeling.

“Tyler!” a familiar voice calls, and he turns to wave to Ron and David.

“Your hair!” Ron says, and waves him over. “Let me see this. My, don’t you look handsome.”

He preens under the attention, rubs the back of his neck and ducks to hide a smile. The band starts playing then, soft but a clear call to order.

“Ron has a roast in the oven,” David whispers as Tyler follows them to their usual seat. “Would you like to join us for dinner, after?”

This isn’t a quick coffee or light lunch. This is coming to their house. Tyler isn’t afraid of them, by any stretch of the imagination. There’s no threat they could possibly pose him, but a visit to their home is more intimate than he’s used to.

He wants to though, that’s the thing.

“Yeah,” he whispers back. “If it’s okay.”

Ron tsks at him and shakes his head, like Tyler is too silly for words.

He’s not sure where he’s sleeping, but he isn’t going to be so rude as to ask if he has a ride after dinner. He’s got enough for cab fare anyway. Enough to crash a week at the hotel if he absolutely needed to.

The first hymn starts, and Tyler stands with the rest to sing, his off-key notes lost in the mass of voices.

The pastor gets up to talk, and she’s got a good voice and sounds like she really cares, but Tyler kind of zones out when they’re not singing. There’s talking, and then the band and choir perform, and then the audience gets to sing again.

Communion makes him nervous, and he doesn’t even know why. The personal attention maybe, the individual assistants or the pastor praying over each and every parishioner.

“Do you want us to come with you?” Ron asks as they’re in line for wafers and grape juice. Tyler’s fingers flex, wanting to have the strap of his backpack to hold onto, but he left it in their pew. He looks to see if it’s still there, and it is.

He shakes his head, and steps forward alone when the server calls for the next in line. He feels a little dizzy, zones out a bit.

“Lord bless this child, keep him and shelter him,” he hears, and he wants to say he’s no kid, but the wafer is offered to his lips and he takes it, raises the thimble-sized cup of juice and drinks. He feels like he left something behind as he walks back to his seat, lighter.

In the car on the way to their home, Ron asks “So what did you think of tonight’s sermon?”

“I…” Tyler doesn’t really want to admit to not listening much. “I like being there,” he says, which is the most truthful thing he can think of to say.

David makes a thoughtful noise. “It took me a long time, to be able to sit there. To figure out that the God they were describing here is no less real than the one from my father’s church. The one they said condemned men like me.”

Tyler nods, because he’s known a lot of people that had a shitty time with religion.

“My family didn’t really do the whole God thing,” Tyler explains. He feels like he’s at risk of rejecting two of the nicest people in the whole world, but he doesn’t want to lie to them, doesn’t want to make them think he believes stuff he doesn’t.

“I don’t get the whole…big plan stuff. Like. If God can stop all this bad stuff happening, then why doesn’t he? And if he can’t, then what’s the fu…frickin’ point?”

“Hmm,” Ron says, thoughtful, as he turns down a narrow street. They’re maybe three miles from the church, and Tyler’s been paying attention in case he has to walk it later.

“Tyler, how does it feel for you, being in church?”

It isn’t the kind of question that should be answered too quick, so he thinks about it before he answers. “I feel. Not-alone, I guess. Like. Surrounded. In a good way.”

“For some people, that’s enough,” David says. “That peace, and not feeling alone. That’s what God is to them, and that’s enough. Nobody can tell you what to believe. You have to find your foundation for yourself. The congregation there, the building itself, is there as a guiding light. It’s there, for you, to take whatever you need from it. You don’t have to believe everything to belong there.”

That’s…maybe what Tyler was so nervous about. That he felt like a fake for going up for communion when he hasn’t completely bought in.

Ron pulls them up to the front of a sprawling ranch-plan house, tired architecture that must have been cutting-edge cool in the late seventies, but looks achingly dated now. The gutters are sagging, the holly bushes in the front so overgrown they brush the underside of the eaves.

The light is out on the porch, and Tyler gives David his shoulder to lean on as Ron fumbles for the keys in the dark.

Inside, the house smells like Ben-Gay and mothballs, the warm meaty scent of the roast distracting Tyler’s stomach from the other odors. The walls are all wood-paneled, with built-in shelves and a fireplace that covers an entire side of the room in brick. The couch is golden velvet and there is a collection of plates depicting scenes of Venice on the wall behind it. It reminds Tyler of his grandparent’s house, the last time he visited there, warm and welcome and like a time capsule he can walk around in.

“Hey,” he offers, “Do you have a lightbulb? I can change out that one on the porch.”

“No, Tyler,” David protests, shaking his head. “I should have done that last week. You don’t have to; you’re a guest.”

And David can barely manage a curb; there’s no way he should be climbing a ladder.

“Come on,” Tyler wheedles. “Don’t make me owe you, okay? How many times have you guys fed me? Leave a guy some pride, yeah?”

Ron passes over a lightbulb and a screwdriver, and David holds the flashlight while Tyler gets up on a chair and unscrews the cover, passes it down, moth-filled and dusty and puts the new bulb in. He dumps the dried corpses out in the yard and puts the cover back on. He’s scared that he hurt David’s pride, that it was a dick move to usurp David’s role as the man around the house that gets stuff done, but David looks more relieved than anything when Tyler comes back down.

Tyler fidgets, wants to ask if they need anything else, but it’s not his house, not his family, and he hands the screwdriver back over with a shrug and a crooked smile.

Ron has the table set and the food artfully displayed when Tyler and David get back in, a big roast in a serving dish, with beets and lima beans and corn on the side. It’s the most-formal dinner Tyler’s had since he left home, and he watches careful, does the napkin in his lap like they do and waits for David to say grace before he starts to fill his plate. It’s like suddenly needing to speak a language he knew as a child, the patterns coming back to him in little bursts accompanied by chagrin as he catches his small mistakes after he makes them.

“So how’ve you been?” David asks, “How’s your sweet puppy?”

Tyler chews and swallows and blots at his mouth. “Good. She’s good. Jamie’s got her tonight, but she’s getting the hang of not _you know_ in the house.”

Ron picks up then, tells a story about their last dog, five years gone now, half-blind and not too smart, walking into the same wall every single morning. It’s nice. Kind of alien, but nice.

“Would you like a ride back to Jamie’s,” Ron asks, after Tyler has helped with the dishes and wiped down the counters.

Tyler shrugs. Tries to figure out if he does or not.

“Trouble?” Ron asks, gentle.

“His brother’s there tonight.”

“And?” Not challenging, just exploring the issue.

Tyler shrugs, chews on his lower lip and wipes the counter down again. The front edge is still sticky, and he scrubs it harder. “He knows we’re…together.” The word doesn’t seem quite right, but there’s nothing better he can think of. He’s turning down friendly orgasms for Jamie, because Tyler doesn’t want them from anyone else, and Jamie is telling his brother about being gay, about them. It’s kind of the biggest deal Tyler’s ever experienced.

Ron waits, and Tyler starts on the cabinet fronts, digging into the ornate carving with a towel-covered thumbnail.

“I don’t know what to be,” he says at last, and Ron purses his lips. “His brother—they’re close. Like really close. And if I fuck it up with him then I’m fucking it up with Jamie. He won’t…”

“Tyler,” Ron cuts in, and Tyler takes a breath. “If he isn’t man enough to stand up for who he wants, then you deserve a hell of a lot better than this guy.”

Tyler laughs, but it sounds ragged. Because with all the reasons Jamie has to drop him, to have gone and found someone better already, his brother’s disapproval would just be a drop in the bucket. It might be the one that tips it over, but chances are that it won’t be. He might “deserve” better, but he’s never going to get it, not in a million years.

“You’re welcome to stay the night,” Ron says. “The guest room might need airing out, but it’s comfortable.”

Tyler kind of feels like a chickenshit, that he doesn’t want to go and face Jamie tonight, doesn’t want to get stuck riding up to Allen and back in the morning.

“If it’s okay,” he says. “Can I make you guys breakfast in the morning?”

Ron sighs like the thought is a massive inconvenience, but there is a glint of mirth in his eyes.

“I suppose, if you must.”

 

 

===================

“So no Tyler again?” Jordie asks as him and Jamie and Marshall get in the truck.

Jamie shrugs. “Guess not.” He’s disappointed, but not really surprised. He’s not sure he would want to go on a road-trip with Tyler’s friends at random, so he can’t really blame Tyler. Still, it would be easier to deal with Jordie’s protectiveness if he had Tyler here to meet him.

“He stand you up a lot?” Jordie asks.

“He didn’t stand me up. He said he’d call if he could come, and he didn’t call, so he didn’t break a commitment. I don’t have him on a leash, Jordie. He doesn’t _have_ to do anything. He’ll come home when he’s ready, or to take care of Marshall when I need him to watch her.”

Jordie frowns. “Wait, so he lives with you now? What the fuck, Jamie, you’ve known this kid for three fucking weeks!”

Jamie winces, because he didn’t mean to say home, not in relation to Tyler. “He doesn’t live there. He just…”

“Just what?” Jordie asks.

Jamie groans and merges onto the highway.

“Just stays there with Marshall when I’m away. And stays with me sometimes when I’m here.”

Jordie makes another unhappy noise.

“Thinking with your dick, baby brother.”

“If I’m making a mistake, it’s mine to make,” Jamie reminds him. The rest of the ride is silent and tense, and Jamie fucking hates it, hates not-talking with Jordie.

 

===========

Ron and David’s guest room is a floral monstrosity, all hunter green and burgundy, magnolia painting over the bed, flowers on the bedspread, the wallpaper border, tucked into vases and draped over the curtain rod in tangled twists of grapevines and silk plants. It smells flowery too, rose-scented perfume and baby powder and something else under that. He sleeps with a burgundy towel between his hair and the ivory pillowcase, just in case his dye is still rubbing off.

He leaves the door unlocked, not because he _would_ but because he wants to know if it’s expected. He puts a dime on top of the knob, just to see if there are strings attached to this kindness.

There aren’t.

He pockets his change in the morning and leaves the sweet-smelling flower-cave before Ron or David is up for the day, starts the coffee maker and pokes through the kitchen, looking for ingredients he can throw together for a meal.

He’s pulling pancakes from the griddle when David shuffles out, moving stiffly and leaning heavier on his cane than Tyler has seen before. “Hey, let me…” he says, and pulls out the closest chair, cups his hands under David’s elbows like he’s seen Ron do before.

“’Mornin’,” Tyler says, bright and cheerful like that didn’t just happen. “There was enough stuff for pancakes. I followed the directions on the box. I hope…”

“Thank you, Tyler,” Ron says from the doorway, and he sits down across from David, respects Tyler’s effort by letting him serve their plates out to them. He watches anxiously as they take the first few bites; he sampled the goods, but he’ll eat damn near anything and he gets the feeling that they’re used to things being a particular way.

“Mm, this is good. Thank you,” David compliments.

Tyler shrugs and smiles and turns away to flip the next batch. “Glad you like them.”

=============

Jamie drops Jordie at the front office at his new club.

“Here,” he says and presses a key to the apartment into Jordie’s hand. “You’ll have to follow somebody else up the parking garage; Tyler has the other clicker.”

Jordie glares, but he takes the key.

Jamie leaves him there and heads back south. The argument aches in his chest and he pulls off in a Chick-fil-A parking lot halfway back to Dallas and sends Jordie a text: _you really dont have to worry. Im ok. I got this._

He’s outside a place with a drive-thru so he might as well get some food. He orders a couple grilled chicken clubs for himself, and then adds another two, figuring he’ll eat them if Tyler doesn’t come back before he gets hungry again.

His phone chirps just after he pays, and he reads the message before he pulls away. _big brother. Worrys my job_ and then _dont want to see you hurt but dont want to fight ether_

_then dont_

_dont fuck it up and ill try_

Jamie snorts at Jordie’s offer to meet far-less-than halfway. It’s all he’s likely to get at this point though. He gets the feeling that if Tyler does screw him over? Jordie won’t let him forget about it until they’re eighty.

===========

“Here, you can just drop me at the store.”

Ron pulls up into a handicap spot in front of the grocery.

“Thanks for the ride,” Tyler says, and he kind of wants to go in for the hug, but he’s in the back seat and he’s likely to see them again soon. It would just be weird to make them get out of the car for that. He puts a hand on each of their shoulders instead, gives them a squeeze and then slips out his door.

“Tyler!” David calls him back, window rolling down and Tyler leans in to hear what he has to say.

“Love is amazing. Being in love is a wonderful thing. But make sure you have roots, my boy. Sink them deep so you’ll have something to hold you down when the world would sweep you away.”

David’s eyes glint wet in the sunlight, and Tyler covers David’s weathered hand with his own, young and strong.

“This life is too harsh to face alone, Tyler. Know you never have to.”

Tyler can’t help but think of his friend, back in the shelter in Toronto, bleeding out on the floor because his infatuation had no substance, no reciprocation. Because there was nothing else to live for.

“Okay,” he says, and it doesn’t sound like nearly enough.

David’s mouth curves into something like a smile. “Call us. Anytime, day or night. If you need anything, we’ll make sure you get it.”

He pats Tyler’s hand then and shoos him away. “Go see this man of yours. Have fun.”

Tyler grins. “I will.”

He just needs a couple things from the store first…

 

=================

 

Jamie’s keys jingle as he comes out of the elevator. Marshall yips eagerly and drags on the leash, trying to hurry him home to the apartment, her little tail wagging in excitement.

Hope and anticipation swell in his chest, and it’s only been a couple days, but he fucking _missed_ Tyler. He opens the door as Marshall tries to dig her way through the crack.

Tyler is there, home, stretched out on his stomach on the couch, eyes closed and Jamie catches the leash before Marshall can go wake him. He looks…beautiful. Tight dark shirt, his jeans low around his hips so a strip of pale skin shows between denim and cotton. Bare feet crossed on the couch’s arm.

And his hair. If Jamie thought it was striking before, it’s absolutely dramatic now, dark plum at the roots, feathering up to brighter magenta, different strands lighter or darker, a hint of pink at the tips. It looks like an experiment Jamie’s science teacher did once, putting different materials into a fire to watch the colors change.

Marshall whines to get at Tyler, and a smile twitches at Tyler’s lips.

“You fucking faker,” Jamie teases, and Tyler’s nose wrinkles with the effort of not opening his eyes.

Jamie goes and puts Marshall in her crate despite her protests and walks to Tyler, crouches beside him.

“Can I…” he asks, and Tyler’s grin goes softer.

“Yeah. Anything.”

Jamie trails his fingers over the fresh-shorn hair over Tyler’s ear, short and soft as velvet. Tyler’s breath catches, and Jamie wonders how long he’s been waiting here, if he’s been thinking of this the whole time, Jamie coming home and touching him. He traces down Tyler’s scalp, down his neck, whisper light.

“Missed you,” Jamie murmurs, not sure if he’s allowed to say that, to feel that.

Tyler hmms but his smile is undiminished.

Jamie brushes his fingertips over Tyler’s smiling lips and they part, draw him in. Tyler’s eyes flicker open and he’s done…something. They’re darker, outlined. Just a little shadow at the base of his lashes but it makes them so much more intense. If Jamie had ever thought about it, he would have expected makeup on a man to make him look softer, more effeminate. This…this is anything but.

Tyler meets Jamie’s gaze as he sucks on his fingers, slow and teasing. Something feels new between them, but Jamie doesn’t know how to name it. He’s hard, but not urgently so. Eventually Tyler pulls back. Flicks Jamie’s skin one last time before he talks.

“I bought some stuff. Some slick. I thought. Maybe you’d like to fuck between my legs? Like. Not assfucking. Just between.”

Jamie’s not sure of the mechanics of it, but he trusts Tyler, knows he’ll take charge and keep Jamie from fucking it up.

“Yeah,” he breathes, and Tyler gets hold of the front of Jamie’s shirt, pulls him down for a shallow teasing kiss.

Then Tyler rolls over and stands up, leads Jamie to the bedroom where a towel is already laid out over the bare sheets.

“Messy sometimes,” Tyler explains, and Jamie knows he was right to leave the planning to him.

The ceiling fan light isn’t on, but the room is plenty bright with the sunlight coming through the blinds. Bright enough for Jamie to see Tyler’s breath hitch before he unfastens his pants and pulls them down, the way he sucks on his upper lip before he slips off his shirt.

Tyler is beautiful, and naked. Really really naked. His body is a little too light for hockey, Jamie thinks, but it’s a work of art, the cut of his muscles, long and lean, the deep V that leads from the top of his hips to his dick. His smile shouldn’t be so uncertain. He’s perfect, just perfect. Jamie steps in and touches him, hands sliding up his sides, over skin so unbelievably soft. Leans in to press his face to Tyler’s neck, to breathe him in. He knows he’s fucked, but he can’t help but look for marks, for hickies or scratches or some sign that someone else has touched Tyler since Jamie saw him last.

Tyler’s lashes hide his eyes as he reaches between them, unties the drawstring on Jamie’s shorts and let them drop. His hands rest on Jamie’s waist for a second, and then he looks up, questioning.

Everything Tyler has done has been a risk—the hair, the makeup, being the first to strip naked. Jamie can’t let him be the only one out there. As scared of rejection as he is, it still feels cowardly. He nods, even as his stomach does flips, tries to remember if he had stubble on his chest when he showered this morning or not, if he should have used Nair then instead of putting it off.

Tyler waits, and fuck fuck fuck, okay. He reaches up behind his neck and gets a handful of shirt, pulls it off over his head. Tyler looks him up and down, pink tongue flicking out to touch his bottom lip.

“Yeah,” he breathes, like he likes what he sees. Like he doesn’t think Jamie looks doughy and thick. His hands reach out; his thumb brushes over a hockey-bruise on Jamie’s lower rib, light so it doesn’t hurt. Then he leans up and nuzzles Jamie’s jaw, their bodies bare and touching from chest to crotch and it’s so much skin that Jamie is dizzy with it.

“C’mon,” Tyler urges, pulling Jamie towards the bed. Jamie has caught on by now, knows not to put Tyler under him as they sprawl on the mattress. He pulls the sheet up over them, gets a hand on Tyler’s dick and Tyler humps up into it, breathy pants slipping past his lips. So quiet, and Jamie has no idea if that means something.

“Wait,” Tyler whines. “Here. Hang on.” He grabs a bottle from the nightstand and dumps a huge squirt of it into his hand, spreads his legs and slicks between them. He rolls on his side away from Jamie, his inner thigh shiny with slick.

“Okay now,” he says, and Jamie moves closer, and Tyler reaches between his own legs to guide him in. “Here, here, yeah.” Gets Jamie where he wants him and closes his thighs around Jamie’s dick.

It’s perfect. So much better than Jamie imagined. Slick and tight. The lube is cool, but warming up fast.

“Yeah,” Tyler breathes. “Keep it pointed that way. But go for it. Come on. Hard as you want.” He reaches back with his arm and grabs Jamie’s butt, pulls him in and then pushes away with his hips. The top side of Jamie’s dick is rubbing along Tyler’s hole, stroking that firm hump behind his balls, and Jamie tries to imagine how that feels.

“Hey,” he says and then thrusts again. Wraps his free hand around Tyler’s dick. “Next time, you do me like this, yeah?” He wants to bite Tyler’s neck, put his mouth on him, but Tyler’s hair is in his way, bright and stiff.

Tyler makes a punched-out groan and his hips jackrabbit jerk, fast but without rhythm. Jamie holds on, tries to hold back. It’s ridiculous, how fast Tyler gets to him, how fucking close he is already.

Tyler grabs the bottle of lube and pours a stream over Jamie’s hand and his own dick. Grunts at the cold slick of it. “Tighter. Tighter, Jamie.”

Jamie increases the pressure, a little and then more as Tyler moans “Yeah yeah yeah.” He’s bucking and squirming like he just can’t take it, and a sound like a sob breaks from his throat as he comes.

“Stop, stop,” Tyler whimpers and Jamie jerks back, would pull away but Tyler’s got a hand on his ass again, keeping him close. “No, keep fucking. Just no more hand.”

And yeah, Jamie would guess that he’s beyond sensitive. Puts his hand on Tyler’s hip and Tyler flexes his thighs, gives Jamie a tight place to fuck into, slick and hot now. There’s no reason to hold back, no way he can hurt Tyler with this, and he fucks in with all the strength of a hockey player’s glutes. Coming coming coming oh fuck.

He collapses when he’s done, drawing close up against Tyler’s back, heedless of the ridge of prickly hair. His dick is still tucked safe and warm between Tyler’s thighs, kind of gross and sticky now, and in a minute he’ll get up and shower, but it feels too good to let go this soon. Feels good to hold Tyler, skin to skin, not have to worry about how he looks.

He wants to say something stupid and inappropriate, leans in and kisses the freckle on the back of Tyler’s ear instead.

=================

Tyler lets Jamie snuggle up against him for a while, until the lube and jizz start to dry and things get unpleasantly sticky.

“I’m gonna…” Tyler says, nodding towards the second bathroom, and Jamie unwinds his arms from around him, lets him climb out of the bed. He pulls his underwear on, even with as gross as his legs and ass have to be, gathers the rest of his clothes and takes them out with him.

Jamie thinks again about that offer to shower together, thinks about Tyler naked and wet, there within arm’s reach.

He uses the master bathroom’s shower alone. Nairs his chest and shaves his face while the depilatory does its thing. He puts on a dab of cologne that he picked up shopping with Jordie.

Tyler beats him to the living room, Marshall out of her crate, sitting on the floor playing with her when Jamie gets there. His hair is still standing tall, but he’s washed the makeup off his face, leaving his cheeks pink.

“I walked her before we came in,” Jamie says, coming out of the bathroom. He wants Tyler to know they’re partners in this. A team. Jamie will pull his weight whenever he can.

“How’d she do, the last couple of days?” Tyler asks. He looks up at Jamie, and Jamie smiles.

“Good. Really good. No accidents. I think Jordie wanted to take her with him.”

Tyler looks back down. Flicks Marshall’s little tag with a fingernail and makes it chime.

“Hey.” Jamie’s voice is soft. “I wouldn’t give your dog away.”

“Our dog,” Tyler corrects, and Jamie sits down beside him on the couch.

“Our dog,” he agrees.

“Besides that, did you guys have a good visit?”

Jamie thinks for a second, and then nods. “Yeah, I guess so.” He hesitates, and Tyler ruffles Marshall’s fur to give him time to get his words in order.

“He’s being weird. Like. He said he was cool with the gay thing. That I’m still his brother and all. But. He’s just being weird in ways he never was when it was girls I was dating.”

Tyler’s shoulder leans lightly against Jamie’s knee and it makes him feel more grounded.

“I accidentally said you live here,” Jamie admits.

“What?” Tyler looks up and back at Jamie with this startled smile on his face like he can’t get how Jamie can be so dumb. Jamie can’t really get it either. “No wonder he’s freaking out. You set him straight though, right?”

Jamie’s shoulders sag. He’s doing this really wrong.

“Can we…can we talk about this?”

Tyler’s grin falters and dies. “About what? How much I stay here? No, hey, it’s fine, I just thought you wanted…” 

“I do.” Jamie cuts in. “I want…the preseason is starting soon and I…I want…” Jamie scrubs a hand over his face in frustration, knowing this is too soon, too much.

Tyler pulls Marshall up against his chest and pushes himself up onto the couch so he’s at the same level as Jamie. She squirms in his arms but he holds her close.

“You want what?” Tyler asks, small and scared and Jamie fucking hates that he did that.

“I want you here,” Jamie sighs. “I want to see you when I’m home, and I want you to be safe when I’m not. I want…to buy you a fucking car so you’re not bumming rides and…”

Tyler’s shoulder bumps his and Jamie shuts up before he can say something too stupid.

“I don’t like it here when you’re away,” Tyler says, and Jamie swallows hard. He can’t even call it safe, not with asshole neighbors around. “I’ll take care of Marshall, but me and her, we won’t always be here when you’re gone. Sometimes. Not all the time.”

Jamie nods. This is starting to sound promising. Tyler bumps him again. “You can’t buy me a car. It’s not like I can get a driver’s license.” If he’s teasing, then everything will be okay. Jamie didn’t ruin it all.

Jamie lets out a relieved breath, all the tension in his chest breaking at the same moment.

“I want you to move in,” Jamie says, and it feels safer now, this…can work.

“I’m not moving in,” Tyler says, but his entire posture is relaxed now. Marshall has finally consented to laying down in his lap. “But I want to see you. I’ll be around.”

Jamie’s not sure what the distinction is, why Tyler won’t put the same words on it that he will, because it sounds like the same thing to him.

“So what do I tell Jordie?”

Tyler snorts. “I am _not_ good at family shit.”

Jamie huffs. “Fine. Leave me on my own.”

Tyler shrugs but doesn’t really look apologetic.

“Asshole,” Jamie says without heat.

“Did you bring food?” Tyler asks, and yeah, he must have heard the Chick-fil-A bag rattle when he was pretending to be asleep on the couch.

“I’d rather go out,” Jamie says, because hours-old fast-food sounds kind of gross.

Tyler nods, always so easy with food. “Yeah, okay. Let’s go.”

 

=================

“He asked me to move in,” Tyler says over Sunday brunch at Ron and David’s house. The couple share a significant look.

“What did you say?” David asks, and Tyler shrugs. Eats one of the enormous beans on his plate. Egyptian food. He’s a fan.

“I said no. Like…” he shakes his head, trying to figure out the words. “He’s being really dumb. He wanted to buy me a car.”

“Tyler,” Ron says, over-gentle in that way that makes Tyler nervous. “Do you think he’s trying to buy your affections?”

Tyler thinks about that one, shakes his head. “I don’t even think he was really offering. Just like saying he _wanted_ to offer? Doesn’t really matter. It’s not like I can even get a driver’s license anyway, so.”

David frowns. “Tyler. How old _are_ you?”

Ron gives David a reproachful look and David makes a helpless shrug, like he had no choice but to ask.

Tyler cocks a crooked grin, but he feels his cheeks going warm. “Old enough to drive. Sheesh. I’ll be eighteen in January. I just…” his smile falters. “Immigration issues.”

“Really.” David looks both surprised, and like this is a problem he can get his teeth into. “I wouldn’t have guessed.”

“Everybody says that,” Tyler complains. So far he’s managed not to have to test the surprise factor against actual authority figures, and he’s hoping he never has to.

David asks a lot of questions then, and Tyler is just slightly more comfortable talking about his fucked up past than he is about Jamie going overboard with everything it is possible to overdo.

“Two years,” David echoes. “How’d you get across the border?”

Tyler has to shrug for this one. He’s not ashamed of who he was then and the things he did, but he doesn’t think nice people like this need to listen to that shit.

“It just uh. I was kind of fucked up over a friend of mine trying to check himself out, up in Toronto. There were these college guys. I dunno. I thought they were in college. Americans. They shared their alcohol with me, as much as I wanted, and the next time I was sober I was in Boston.”

“Was there sex involved?” Ron asks, and Tyler’s stomach churns unpleasantly. Is it fucking written across his forehead?

“I don’t…” he starts.

Ron shakes his head. “You don’t have to talk about this. You never have to talk about anything you don’t want to.”

Tyler takes a deep breath and pushes his plate away.

“Is your family still in the picture?” David asks, and Tyler shrugs again.

“My parents know where I am. They just can’t deal. Even if they could, I just…don’t think I could go back there.”

The guys nod like this makes perfect sense, and Tyler feels a little better, that someone gets it, how hard it is to imagine stepping back into a life so long gone.

=============

 

Not-living with Tyler is a lot like living together, as far as Jamie can figure. Tyler is home almost all the time Jamie is. Sometimes he goes out in the afternoon, having Jamie drop him at that steak house parking lot. Sometimes Jamie will get home and the place is quiet, Tyler and Marshall out somewhere, but when Jamie texts, Tyler either gives him an address for Jamie to come get him or says he’ll be back soon.

September ends with the pre-season games. Jamie has his first NHL fight and Tyler laughs at his bruises and then kisses them better. Blows him in the dark, slow and loose and wet. Jamie thinks it’ll never be enough for him to come, right up until the moment when he does.

Over half the September games are in Florida, but the trip to Colorado reminds him that winter is still a thing that happens, that is _going to_ happen, even in Texas. It isn’t chilly enough for long sleeves, even early in the morning when Jamie and Tyler take Marshall down to walk, but it will be. The guys have mentioned the weather, how it’s more sleet and ice than snow, usually, cold and wet.

By Jamie’s count, Tyler owns two pairs of pants (one cargo, one jeans) and three shirts (two tank tops and one short sleeve navy blue one that Jamie has particular affection for). He’ll need more, that’s just a fact. ‘Borrowing’ Jamie’s shirts isn’t going to get him through the winter. At the very least he’ll need a jacket and a couple sweaters, a good coat for the worst days.

Tyler is taking all the money Jamie leaves for him, but Jamie doesn’t know what he spends it on. Groceries for some of it, a slowly expanding menu of things that Tyler feels confident cooking. Jamie doesn’t think there’s any hard drug use going on, and he hasn’t seen Tyler drunk or hungover since that day he picked him up at the hotel.

He hasn’t bought clothes though, so Jamie figures it’s up to him. He starts with a hoodie, gets the size from Tyler’s shirt in the laundry pile and picks a jacket up at the gift-shop at the iceplex.

“They had these at work, so I got one for you,” he says as he comes in after practice, into an apartment that smells like salmon broiling in the oven, grilled onions and red peppers and that spicy-sweet yellow sauce Tyler makes to drizzle over it all. Ditching fast food with the guys was totally the right decision.

Tyler gives him a smile that is totally calling bullshit, but it’s a smile and not Tyler taking offense at Jamie trying to take care of him, so he’ll take it.

He picks up a sweater at a hotel boutique, dawn gray cashmere, thick and so soft he has a hard time keeping his hands off it even before it’s on Tyler’s body. The price tag makes him ill, Jesus it’s just yarn, what are they feeding these sheep, gold? But Tyler’s face when he pulls it on makes it worth every penny.

The jeans are harder. He asks Tyler to go along with him to Target, for a couple things to finish out the guest room so Jordie can stay overnight without sleeping on the couch (if they ever get a gap in their schedules that line up) and while they’re there he stops by the clothing racks.

“Think these’ll look good on me?” he asks, and Tyler shrugs.

“Can’t know until you try them on.” There’s a hint of a flirt in his voice, the shadow of a tease.

Jamie hmms and grabs four different kinds of pants in his own size, and then the same in Tyler’s.  
“If I’m gonna play dress-up for you, the least you can do is join me.”

Tyler rolls his eyes, but he takes the stall next to Jamie’s and tries on just as many pants as Jamie does. He tries to slip them on the reject rack when they’re done though, and Jamie gathers the three pairs that had fit and puts them in the shopping cart.

“I like seeing these on you,” he says. “Please. Please let me buy them, okay?”

“Whatever makes you happy,” Tyler says, with only a small serving of long-suffering indulgence.

Jamie will take the win. Tyler grabs a pack of underwear and one of socks off the shelf before they hit the checkout line, guards them jealously and pays with money out of his own pocket.

“It would just be weird,” he tells Jamie as the cashier rings him up, and Jamie shrugs because agrees, but he would have survived the awkwardness rather than have Tyler do without something so fucking basic.

============

“Hey, what happened to your gutter?”

“My what?” Ron asks, pausing over the pan of sliced chicken-breast he’s stirring.

Tyler uses the knife he’s coring apples with to point at the front door of the house, where the front porch’s gutter has been sagging since the first time he ever came over. Raises his eyebrows because gutter? Did that used to be a dirty word in old-timey gay slang?

“Oh,” Ron says, “A branch fell on it last winter. We had a tree service out to get rid of the limb, but we didn’t have anybody to do the gutter. David was going to…”

But of course David hadn’t, because David couldn’t, and it would have rankled to hire someone to do something he felt he should do for his home and his partner.

“You got a ladder?” Tyler asks, because he got away with changing the light; maybe David won’t mind him replacing a couple screws either.

=============

“Okay, November third?”

“Practice,” Jordie counters. “Traveling the fourth and fifth, how about the sixth?”

“That…” Jamie looks over his calendar, marked with practices and games and publicity events. “That works, actually. Let me make sure it’s okay with Tyler.”

Jordie is quiet for an ominously long stretch of seconds.

“Yeah. Get back to me on that,” he says, and Jamie hates this, hates that Jordie feels he needs to protect Jamie from the best thing that’s ever happened to him (okay, the best thing besides playing in the NHL). The best thing on a personal level.

“I’m heading home now. I’ll let you know later tonight.”

Jordie sighs. “Yeah. Okay.”

==============

Tyler is playing video games when Jamie gets back home. Marshall gallops over to greet him, all long legs and big paws.

There is a crock pot simmering on the island that Jamie doesn’t recognize. It looks too old to have come with this apartment, harvest gold with a pattern of geometric flowers around the edge, the paint darkened with age nearer to the heating elements.

“Hey,” Tyler says, eyes still focused hard on the screen. He’ll play out this life and then quit the game, Jamie knows, so he goes to check out lunch.

Jamie lifts the lid off the pot and steams himself with rich beefy stew-smell.

“That’s ready to eat,” Tyler says, breaks off to focus on the game for a second and then flicks another glance Jamie’s way. “I had it keeping warm for you.”

“You eat yet?” Jamie asks, and when Tyler answers that he hasn’t, he grabs a second bowl down and serves out the stew, thick and heavy, more meat than veggies.

Tyler makes a groan of aggravation at his game and lays down the controller, finally looks up at Jamie with his full attention.

“Good practice?” Tyler asks, and takes the bowl Jamie hands him, and Jamie tells him about the new powerplay strategy, how hard everyone is struggling.

“I uh, talked to my brother before I left. We’ve both got the sixth off.”

Tyler stuffs a spoonful of stew in his mouth and waits for Jamie to get to some point with this.

“He was thinking about driving down. I told him I’d ask you?”

“Ask me what? Should I clear out then?”

“No!” That’s definitely not what Jamie is hinting at. “No. I just thought. If you were around you could hang out with us, get to meet my family. Maybe we could all go out and you could fleece him at pool.”

That gets a little smirk, but then Tyler shrugs. “Seriously? Jamie, this seems like a good idea to you?”

And no, it doesn’t, but not-doing it isn’t working either; Jordie’s animosity towards a guy he’s never even met has zero chance of going away without actually meeting him.

“I just think if he meets you, he’ll see how dumb he’s being.”

Tyler bows his head and Jamie feels bad, pushing him to this, but he’s sure, sure that it’ll make things better. He cups a hand around the back of Tyler’s neck and presses a kiss to his temple.

“Trust me babe, okay?”

Tyler sighs and some of the tension goes out of him. “Yeah. Okay.”

 

=================

 

“Blow me for luck?” Tyler asks Jamie over breakfast, and Jamie is just glad he cooked eggs at home instead of eating out.

“You don’t need luck,” he says, and Tyler smirks, shrugs.

“For fun then,” Tyler says, and yeah, Jamie can get with that.

“Sure. Here?” It wouldn’t be the first time Jamie was on his knees for Tyler in the middle of the kitchen.

Tyler looks at Jamie in a way that makes him feel nearly as naked as actual nudity. Chews and swallows his last bite of sausage.

“Bed, yeah?”

Jamie…can’t quite get a bead on Tyler’s mood. He doesn’t seem actually horny. His smile more challenging than welcoming. Like he expects Jamie to tell him no or something.

Like hell Jamie’s gonna do that.

“Yeah. Bed.” He holds out his hand and Tyler takes it, and Jamie leads him to the bedroom, sits him down on the edge of the bed and folds to his knees between Tyler’s feet. He looks up at Tyler’s face and Tyler quirks another crooked grin.

“Not gonna suck itself,” he says, and Jamie feels the heat rising in his cheeks, god, so fucking dirty but it gets him, turns him on.

He reaches out and unbuttons Tyler’s jeans, unzips the zipper. Tyler lifts his ass so Jamie can pull them down.

He’s never seen Tyler soft before, except for after sex. He’s gotten more experienced at the whole sucking dick thing, but he’s not exactly sure what to do with a flaccid cock. He rests his palms on Tyler’s bare thighs. Leans in and breathes on his dick, a soft tickle of air, touches it with his lips, sliding them along the crinkled side. Flicks his tongue out around the edge of the foreskin where it completely covers the head.

He looks up and Tyler’s eyes are nearly closed, almost hidden behind the long sweep of his eyelashes. His lips are parted, his breathing carefully even. Hands braced on the bedcovers. Jamie licks him again and his dick is starting to fill out, rising slowly under Jamie’s touch. He nuzzles in again and then slips Tyler into his mouth, sliding down easily to the root, lets himself be pushed back by the swelling flesh pushing at the back of his throat.

“Jamie…” Tyler whispers, and Jamie pets his thighs, takes him in again as deep as he can without choking.

“Jamie, I…” and it’s not a warning that he’s coming. He sounds lost and not urgent. Jamie pulls off and looks up.

Tyler’s cocky grin is gone, and Jamie wants to hold him, wants to tell him it’s okay, fuck, Jordie…Jordie isn’t going to make Jamie kick him out. He doesn’t have that power.

“That thing we did. Where you put your dick between my legs. Can I do that?”

“Yeah,” Jamie sighs, relieved, because this is easy, this he can do. “Of course. Yeah. How do we…”

Tyler kicks his jeans off where they’d ended up tangled around his feet, stands and pulls Jamie up.

There is a kiss, brief and soft, and Jamie gets the nerve to murmur, “We could…you could fuck me. I got condoms…”

Tyler presses lips against Jamie’s neck, shakes his head no.

“I don’t need. Just. Come on. Lay down.” And he puts Jamie on his back on the bed, helps him get his pants off. Jamie has good legs, hockey-strong and muscled. Tyler runs his hands up them and then nudges Jamie to roll over on his stomach.

It’s weird, laying down with his ass hanging out. The squirt of lube is cold on his skin and Tyler’s fingers pushing between his thighs, getting Jamie slick where he wants it is kind of alien. He’s glad, a little, that Tyler didn’t take him up on the offer. He wants, but…awkward. Maybe so much awkward that it wouldn’t end up as sexy as Jamie envisions.

Then Tyler covers Jamie, his body heat pressing through both of their shirts. His dick is warm between Jamie’s legs, slipping and sliding there and Tyler moaning in his ear. Jamie humps down against the bed, and it’s not the right contact, not warm and slick and skin, but the whole thing feels good, being under Tyler, having Tyler’s dick rubbing up against him.

Tyler’s mouth closes warm and wet over Jamie’s neck, and his hand slides down to wrap around Jamie’s dick. There isn’t enough room to stroke, but he holds, and Jamie slides in his grip.

The stinging, sucking bite just over the back collar of his shirt is what pushes Jamie over, the sudden wet heat between his thighs. Tyler’s weight collapses on him and he wraps his arm up to get a hold of Tyler’s shoulder, hungry for even more contact.

“You okay?” Jamie asks when his heart has finally slowed, when his brain has started functioning again.

Tyler takes a shuddering breath and nods against his back. “Yeah. Yeah, I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

Jamie smiles, because nothing could be further from the truth.

“Nah.”

“I…” Tyler starts again, and Jamie waits, gives him the quiet to get the words together.

“I’m gonna shower,” Tyler says at last, and he pulls away, leaving Jamie chilled and alone in the bed.

=========

 

“I’ll get that,” Jamie says the second there’s a knock on the door. He’s closer, though Tyler doesn’t think it was accidental. That’s okay, he needs to make sure Marshall’s water dish is full anyway. She follows him around like she can’t stand to be more than two feet away from him, and he scritches behind her ears while he’s down there. He knows she’s picking up the tension, and he hates that she’s sad.

“Hey, how’s it going?” Tyler hears, Jordie’s voice bolder than Jamie’s but the accents the same. 

He stands up and wipes the water-dish water off his hands and onto his pants. Jordie’s a good looking guy, stronger, sharper features than Jamie, a chin that could stop a freight train. Same terrible hockey flow. 

“Good, good,” Jamie says, and Tyler hates that he sounds so tense. “Jordie, this is Tyler. Tyler, Jordie.”

Tyler steps in and offers his hand. Jordie takes it, his eyes going to Tyler’s Mohawk, so carefully sculpted and sprayed after Tyler’s shower earlier. A muscle tics along that strong jawline and Tyler smirks. 

Jordie is still looking at Tyler’s hair, so he tips his chin up. “Eyes are down here, dude.”

Jordie releases Tyler’s hand after one shake, blinks away the fascination with the Mohawk. “Yeah. That’s uh. Some hair you’ve got there.”

“Thanks!” Tyler says, even though he doesn’t think Jordie meant it as a compliment. There is a pack of beer in Jordie’s left hand and Tyler slides into his personal space and liberates two bottles, passes one to Jamie. “Thanks for the beer too.”

That gets a full frown out of Jordie. Tyler goes around to the kitchen drawer, digs the bottle opener out and pops the top off his beer. It’s not even noon yet, but fuck it. 

“Hey!” Jordie snaps as Tyler takes a swig. Some kind of micro-brew bullshit. “There is no way you’re old enough to drink.”

Jamie flinches, “Jordie…”

“Neither’s Jamie,” Tyler reminds him. “You didn’t bring it over to drink in front of us, did you?”

“I didn’t think…Jesus fuck, how old are you?”

Tyler laughs, sharp and tight. It doesn’t feel good in his throat. 

“Why is everybody asking that this week?”

“Jordie.” Jamie says again, sharper this time, steps in between them even though Tyler has the island in the way already. Jordie’s tense, but Jamie could grab him if he went over the counter to get to Tyler. He doesn’t think he’s in any danger of getting hit. 

“Jamie,” Jordie says like this is taking all his patience. “What the fuck, how old _is_ this kid? I’m just looking out for you. God damn it, are you ready to go to jail over _this_?”

“Hey!” Tyler’s smile is gone now, just gone. “I wouldn’t fucking… I’m legal, okay? Nobody’s going to jail, what the hell.” He turns to Jamie, his big dark eyes, so fucking vulnerable. 

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” he says, softer, just for Jamie. “I wouldn’t fuck this up for you.”

“I know,” Jamie says, and Tyler thinks he’s every bit the dumbass his brother is implying, to trust like this, to trust someone like Tyler, because Tyler would, he just hasn’t. 

He tips the beer into the sink, listens to it gurgle down the drain. Watches Jordie’s eyes and sees some of the fight go out of them. He quirks his eyebrows and Jordie is the first to look away. 

“So uh, I thought we could play some video games, or there’s this place with a pool table that Tyler showed me,” Jamie puts in, awkward in the role of peace-maker. 

Tyler tosses the empty bottle in the trash and gets a bottle of Gatorade out of the fridge instead. Gestures their guest ahead of him to the couch.

“Video games. Sure,” Jordie says, and he sits and Jamie sits.

Tyler wishes he hadn’t taken Marshall out earlier so he’d have an excuse to get out for a second. 

They play. 

Jamie keeps trading out with Jordie or Tyler, keeping them together on the couch like proximity is going to make them friends. 

And that’s…he can live with this. Jordie doesn’t like him, but Tyler’s not sure he’d like a boy like him dating someone he cared about either, so that’s fair. 

The round on screen ends and the scores pop up and Tyler beat Jordie by a dozen kills. “Yeah, baby!” he congratulates himself because nobody else is doing it. He gets up and stretches and Marshall whines at the door. 

“I’m gonna take her out,” he says, and Jamie gets up from the side chair, joins him at the door and starts pulling on his shoes.

“I’ll come with you,” he says, and Tyler feels a little better, that he isn’t hanging back to talk about Tyler behind his back. 

“Yeah,” he says, and smiles as he pulls on his sweater. “Cool.”

“We’ll be right back,” Jamie tells Jordie, “Make yourself at home.”

Tyler snaps the leash to Marshall’s collar and Jamie steps close to him as they go out into the hallway, elbows brushing. 

“Thanks,” he murmurs, “For trying.”

Tyler shrugs, because he really is, it just seems stupid to accept gratitude when his efforts are not yielding the best results. 

“Jamie,” he says as the elevator doors close. Jamie cups the back of Tyler’s neck in his big hand, leans in so their foreheads touch. 

“Food when we get back?” Jamie asks, and Tyler sighs. His stomach is more knotted than hungry, but it’ll be something to do with his hands, something to distract Jordie from any fuckups Tyler might make. 

“Yeah. Yeah, whatever sounds good to you guys.” 

==========================

They go out to eat and then to a place Tyler knows about that has more than one billiard table. It’s a fucking train wreck. Tyler offers Jordie a small bet to start and just goes from there.

“Don’t,” Jamie warns them both. This is dumb. So fucking dumb.

“C’mon, Jamie,” Tyler cajoles, “It’s just a game between friends. The wager’s just to make it interesting.”

“Jordie.” Jamie says, tries to get his attention, but Jordie shakes his head.

The worst of it is, Jamie is pretty sure Jordie knows just how badly he’s outclassed here. Tyler keeps the games vaguely tight, like if Jordie had a spectacular run of luck he might be able to tie it up, win his money back, but the ease of the shots Tyler makes and the blatantness of the ones he misses are beyond obvious.

“Tyler!” Jamie hisses when Jordie goes to the ATM. Tyler’s lazy smile doesn’t go near his eyes.

“You think he’ll stop if I tell him to?” he asks, and no. Jordie is gonna get pissy and refuse to quit.

Jordie is about three hundred dollars in the hole when Tyler stretches, shakes his head at Jordie’s instance of double-or-nothing. “Nah. I’m done.” He peels his ten off the top of the stack of bills and presses the rest to Jordie’s chest, the insult as clear as his ‘missed’ shots earlier.

“That was fun,” he says, in a tone that makes it clear it was anything but. Turns his back on Jordie to go put his stick back on the wall.

Jordie closes his hand over the cash, but he’s as angry as Jamie has ever seen him, eyes dark and frowning heavy.

Jamie is getting an ache in his jaw from grinding his teeth.

“You guys hungry?” he asks, desperate for anything to put an end to this.

“We just ate,” Tyler reminds him, and yeah, it was barely two hours ago.

“Get in the truck,” Jamie growls at them both. Fucking assholes. How did he think this was a good idea?

 

=========

The driving range seems like the safest place for Tyler and Jordie to be in proximity. Neither of them is good enough at golf that it becomes a competition. Jamie takes the station between them, and there isn’t much chatter as they tee up and swing.

Tyler is…bad. Like missing the ball entirely bad, but he’s laughing about it. Even Jordie relaxes a little at Tyler’s flailing. It’s a good thing. Jamie was going to drag them to paintball next.

“Here,” Jamie groans. “You’re holding the club wrong.” He rearranges Tyler’s fingers on the grip, pinky of his right hand laid over the index of his left.

“Oh,” Tyler says. “That feels. Weird.”

“Take a swing,” Jamie urges, and Jordie leans on his club to watch.

“Too much torque,” Jordie says after Tyler’s practice swing.

Jamie sees Tyler freeze, take a long look at Jordie like he’s trying to tell if this is helpful or chirping.

Jordie mimics Tyler’s swing. “You’re getting too twisted here. Like your hip is coming around too early and your weight is shifting late.”

Tyler sucks his lower lip between his teeth and then nods. “Yeah. Okay.”

It’s easier after that. They shoot balls for an hour or so, and then Jordie and Jamie are hungry again and Tyler can always eat. Driving home to walk Marshall in between venues eats time too, and Jamie loves his brother, is starting to think maybe he more-than-likes Tyler, but he’s glad to see the sun going down.

He drives them back to the apartment, Tyler squeezed into the center of the bench seat between Jamie and his brother.

“Beer?” Jordie offers, when he gets his own out of the fridge. Jamie is just about to say no, but Jordie isn’t asking him.

“Sure,” Tyler says, cautious, but he takes the bottle Jordie offers. Jordie raises an eyebrow, and Jamie shrugs, holds out his hand for one too.

They hang around then, watch a movie, Tyler in the chair and Jamie and Jordie together on the couch. Jamie tries to remember Tyler touching him at all since Jordie got there, and besides the inevitable bumping around in the truck and the contact in the elevator, there hasn’t been any. He watches Tyler watching the TV and wonders if he should go over there, try to make room on the chair for both of them. If he could tell Jordie to switch without it being weird. If not-touching is what Tyler wants or what Tyler thinks he wants.

Halfway into the movie, Tyler gets up and puts Marshall’s water dish in the sink, and when it’s over, he goes to get her leash. Jamie goes down with him again, fingers tugging on the cuff of Tyler’s sleeve, brushing his waist, slipping in between Tyler’s and Tyler allows it, grips Jamie’s fingers tight until the elevator opens on the ground floor.

The wind is blowing and the temperature dropping. “Should have worn my sweater,” Tyler complains, but Jamie is kind of glad that he didn’t, that he steps into the lee of Jamie’s body and stands just a little too close for straight dudes.

They get back upstairs and Jordie has already gone into the guest room, and Jamie figures that’s for the best. “Night,” he calls at the door, and Jordie grunts from inside. His schedule is just as grueling as Jamie’s, so he doesn’t take offense.

That just leaves…

“So uh. Am I on the couch or what?” Tyler asks, and Jamie shakes his head.

“No. Not unless you want…”

Tyler takes a couple slow breathes and then nods, decisive, his hair bobbing at the motion. “Yeah. Okay. Bed it is.”

So they get Marshall settled and go in, stripping down to boxer briefs and t-shirts. Jamie pulls the blankets back and crawls between the sheets and Tyler joins him there, sliding their legs together, face to face, chest to chest. His fingers slip under the bottom of Jamie’s shirt; he presses his palm down over Jamie’s side, over the love-handles Jamie has had since he was twelve.

“Sorry I’m being a dick,” Tyler whispers in the dark, and Jamie nuzzles in, brushes their lips together.

“Didn’t think it would be so shitty,” he admits. “If I thought…I wouldn’t have asked,” he sighs. “Breakfast tomorrow and then he’s gotta drive back up to Allen for a game.” Jamie has a game too. He thinks some quality time is in store, either after the game if Tyler’s still awake, or the next morning, maybe.

Tyler kisses him back, lips and tongue flicking against Jamie’s, then trailing down his throat.

“We can’t…” Jamie starts to say, but of course they can. Jordie won’t be dumb enough to come in unannounced, and he can sure as hell fool around with his own boyfriend in his own apartment.

“Think you can be quiet?” Tyler whispers. He frees Jamie’s dick and then slithers down under the covers.

=======

Jamie thinks he’s the first one up in the morning. Tyler is sound asleep in his arms, and Marshall hasn’t whined yet. He figures he’s awake though, and should make a token attempt to play host for his brother.

He closes the bedroom door quietly behind him, wanting Tyler to have as much peace and quiet this morning as possible. Jordie is just coming in the front door though, Marshall’s leash in one hand, a cup of Starbucks in his other.

“Your coffee maker is broken,” Jordie complains, and yeah. There’s coffee everywhere, covered in a layer of paper towels across the counter and part of the floor.

Jamie groans. “There’s a thing. To hold the filter.” He goes to start doing a better job of cleaning up and Jordie drops his keys and stuff in the island bowl and grabs a towel.

“He _is_ cute,” Jordie says, dabbing at a rivulet of coffee that’s dried on the granite already. “Never figured you to go after someone so flashy though.” It’s the right mix of concern and brotherly chirping.

“He’s…” Jamie starts, but the door to the bedroom opens then, Tyler coming out with his hair all crumpled to the side and wiping the sleep out of his eyes.

“Hey,” Tyler says, adorably rumpled. He ended up in one of Jamie’s shirts after his was used in the cleanup last night, and it hangs loose through the shoulders. He looks young and vulnerable, and if Jordie fucks with him, Jamie’s just done. He’s not sure what he’ll do if Tyler is the one to start the fucking-with though. Cry, maybe.

Tyler bumps into him on the way to the coffee maker, stares at the empty pot like he’s waiting for it to fill. Jamie chuckles and nudges to the side so he can grab the grounds-filled filter-holder.

“It did the thing,” Jamie says, and Tyler grunts, turns around and wanders back to the bedroom.

=========

Fugh. Ugh. Morning, no coffee, Jordie. No, just no.

There are many things Tyler thinks himself capable of, but that combination is beyond him. He’s seen the cleanup from that stupid coffee maker before, and it’ll take like twenty minutes to clean it out and get it running again, and the sight of the Starbucks cup on the counter has triggered a caffeine craving he’s having a hard time denying. He pulls on a pair of Jamie’s sweats on over his boxer briefs and goes back out.

Jordie and Jamie are still working on cleaning up the mess. “I’ll bring you back a cup,” Tyler tells Jamie so he doesn’t waste time starting the maker brewing a batch of mediocre coffee when there’s something better downstairs and across the block. Jamie calls back a distracted thanks.

Tyler reaches for Marshall’s leash but Jordie says “Already took her.”

Tyler grunts at that, the most civil expression he can manage. Fuck why does it feel so early?

He grabs the cash out of the bowl and pulls on his shoes by the door. The hall is quiet except for the health-nut neighbor couple coming back from their Saturday morning run. They give him nods of greeting, and it feels kind of neat, to have been in one spot long enough that people recognize him, to be viewed like he belongs in a place like this.

He goes to the elevator lobby and leans on the button until it rattles its way up.

He gets all the way to the ground floor, and this is dumb. It makes no sense. Like yeah, they need coffee now, him and Jamie, but of all the stuff the Stars house-dresser got for this apartment, the coffee maker is just shitty. Jordie has a better machine than they do. He pushes the button to go back up. He’ll just run back in and get some money out of his cache and get them something that actually does its damn job while he’s at it.

==========

 

Jordie stares at the door, long after Tyler closes it behind him.

“Did that just fucking happen?”

“Huh?” Whatever Jordie’s talking about, Jamie didn’t see it.

“Your boyfriend just—took my money and left.”

“What?”

Jordie gestures helplessly at the bowl where his keys and wallet still lay and the door.

Jamie sighs. “Was it loose in there, or in your wallet?”

Jordie frowns. “What does that matter? It wasn’t his.”

“I’ll pay you back,” Jamie says, and Jordie frowns deeper.

“So what. He takes money from you without asking like a regular thing?”

Jamie takes a slow, measured breath, and tries to keep his temper, tries to see this from Jordie’s side.

“Look. He’s…in some fucked up circumstances. I leave money in the bowl. If he needs it, he takes it. So he never has to ask. So it’s not a thing.”

“You give him money,” Jordie says, careful, each word enunciated. “And he has sex with you.”

“No!” Jamie says. “I mean, I do, and he does, but.”

“Jamie, there’s a fucking word for that. You can’t seriously think…”

“That he likes me?” Jamie’s voice gets louder and louder. “Is that so hard to believe? That someone like Tyler, he likes me and wants to be with me?”

“Then why does he take your money, Jamie? Why would he use you like that?”

“Because he doesn’t have any!” Jamie is yelling now. “Fuck you! Jesus, would you be saying this if he was a girl?”

“I don’t care that he’s a guy! You deserve better!” Jordie yells back. “You could do so much better!”

“I don’t want better! I want him! He makes me happy, Jordie. If he was. If. I would pay ten times what I’ve given him, Jordie. Twenty times and call it a bargain. He makes me feel good in ways I never have, not once. Can you understand that? I…” and he won’t say the rest, not to Jordie before he tells Tyler. 

“Why the hell can’t you just let me be happy? This is none of your fucking business.”

“You’re living with a god-damn hooker, Jamie!” Jordie yells.

The coffee maker is in the air before Jamie knows he’s touched it, smashing against the wall by the door. Marshall yelps and runs behind the couch and Jordie stands his ground. 

“So fucking what if I was?” Jamie shouts back. “So fucking what? You know what? You get the hell out of my house, Jordie. You don’t get to fucking say that about him.”

Jamie is dimly aware that his phone is chirping an incoming text, but he’s too pissed to look at it, too far beyond anger. If this was on the ice he would have dropped the gloves already; there would be blood by now, the satisfying sting where his knuckles smashed against someone else’s face. 

“Jamie…” Jordie starts, like there’s a way to apologize for this.

“Get out,” Jamie tells him again. “Get your shit and get the hell out.”

Jordie’s anger starts to fade, replaced by apology, worry. 

Jamie turns his back on him, can’t stand to look at him right now. Fuck. He goes over to the couch, but Marshall shrinks back from him, shaking like a leaf, her tail tucked tight under her body.

“Oh baby,” he says, imitating Tyler’s voice with her when she cringes during a thunder storm, “I’m sorry baby, I’m sorry. You’re okay, come on Marshall, come here, baby, shhh, shhh.”

He crouches down beside her and she slinks into his touch, and Jordie doesn’t get it, how much Tyler and Marshall both deserve better than him. 

Jordie goes into the room he slept in, gathers his clothes from yesterday and pauses at the door. 

“Jamie,” he tries again, but Jamie won’t look up.

“Shut up and go, Jordie,” he says, still in the soothing baby-voice he’s using with Marshall. 

Jordie sighs and goes and Jamie sits and waits. Tyler will be back in a minute. He needs to get his shit together. Needs to get up and start cleaning the mess he made so Tyler won’t have to. 

He waits, and Marshall eventually calms down. He lets her climb in his lap. Tyler…still isn’t there, and he has a moment of dread, that Jordie ran into him in the hall, that he said something, did something. 

Shit.

He gets up and he’s going to go out, to make sure Jordie’s car is gone, and then he remembers the text message and he should check that, just in case. 

Tyler’s name comes up on the screen, and he feels a wave of relief, before he sees the message itself and his heart cracks in his chest.

_FUCK YOU_

_I LOVED YOU ASSHOLE_

__and then as he reads, another comes up,

_FIND YOURSELF A REAL HOOKER_

_I’M DONE_

_FUCK YOU_

_FUCK YOU_

_FUCK YOU_

Oh god, oh god shit, no. 

_wait_ he sends back as fast as he can type.

_wait please it wasn’t that_

_I didn’t mean_

_I don’t think you are_

_Please please_

_Come home so I can talk to u_

_I kicked jord out_

_Please let me talk_

_I’m sorry_

_Fuck_

He stuffs his feet in his shoes and runs for the door when there’s no reply. How far could Tyler have gotten? How far could he go in that time? Should he grab the truck or run on foot? Should he bring Marshall, so Tyler will listen, so Tyler will have something he cares about to stay for?

Shit. Shit. Shit. 

Jamie hits the stairs, taking them down two at a time and then jumping over the last six of each flight. 

He steps out in the Texas sun, bright even before ten in the morning in November. 

People are walking on the sidewalk, in and out of the little boutiques that make up the bottom floor of the apartment complex, going about their lives like Jamie’s didn’t just fall apart.

Tyler is nowhere in sight.

===============


	2. Chapter 2

Jordie’s words are sharp, even through the apartment door, and Tyler freezes with his keys in hand, his heart pounding.

“Then why does he take your money, Jamie? Why would he use you like that?”

“Because he doesn’t have any!”

Tyler has never heard Jamie yell before. An angry growl, that time he cornered Tyler about leaving a sick dog in his place. Not full-out shouting. Not like this.

“Fuck you! Jesus, would you be saying this if he was a girl?”

“I don’t care that he’s a guy! You deserve better than _this guy_! You could do so much better!”

Tyler’s breath catches in his chest like a ball of barbed wire. He waits, for Jamie to get it, that Jordie is right, that Tyler is a shitty place-holder for the person who will be a good partner to Jamie.

What he gets instead is so much worse.

“I don’t want better! I want him!” Jamie’s voice falls, and Tyler misses a few words. “I would pay ten times what I’ve given him, Jordie. Twenty times and call it a bargain. He makes me feel good in ways I never have, not once! Can you understand that? I…”

The keys fall out of Tyler’s hand, onto the door mat, and he can’t think, can’t breathe. He reaches down and picks the keys up by blind instinct, fingers shaking.

Jamie…Jamie thinks he’s a fucking hooker. All Tyler’s done, all he’s fucking _shown_ Jamie, and he thinks this is about money? It is too much and he takes a step back from the raw hurt of it.

He finds himself at the elevator and pushes the button on instinct. He has to get away. Has to…something. Anger wells up in him, brighter and clearer than the pain, the grief.

He pulls out his phone and texts Jamie,

_FUCK YOU_

_I LOVED YOU ASSHOLE_

The elevator comes and he steps in, fingers still on the keys.

_FIND YOURSELF A REAL HOOKER_

_I’M DONE_

_FUCK YOU_

_FUCK YOU_

_FUCK YOU_

The elevator opens and he runs out, dodges around some dude walking a Pomeranian. His heart pounds so heavily he’s dizzy. He skips through traffic against the light, gets honked at by some asshole in a BMW.

His phone buzzes, then again in his pocket.

He doesn’t. Doesn’t know what Jamie could say that would make this better, but he looks anyway.

_wait_

_wait please it wasn’t that_

_I didn’t mean_

_I don’t think you are_

_Please please_

_Come home so I can talk to u_

_I kicked jord out_

_Please let me talk_

_I’m sorry  
_

An onslaught of messages, and the icy burn in his chest turns to a crushing ache, because he fucking loves Jamie. God he’s so stupid; he’s fucked up so bad, letting himself get happy, get comfortable. He wants to go back now, wants to let Jamie lie to him and pretend it’s better.

But that’s all it would be, for both of them. Tyler pretending Jamie cares about him. Jamie pretending he can buy Tyler’s love.

He’d be a whore for real then.

It would break him. Of all the things he’s lived through, all the things he’s done and had done to him, he’s made it out alive, but this. He won’t. He can’t.

He’s making a noise.

People are staring at him.

He’s given Jamie the power to destroy him, and he needs to take it back.

There’s a brick wall beside him, part of the next block’s brownstones. He turns, and spikes his phone into the base of it, flinches back from the hail of broken plastic as it shatters. He knows, as he does it, that he needs that fucking phone, but he needs to stop listening to Jamie more, needs to get away as clean as he knows how. If he goes back Jamie’s soft voice and Bambi eyes will get him all turned around again. Easier this way, to be free of his hope.

He runs. Hands empty, nothing, nothing at all to start over from.

Stupid. So, so stupid.

He runs, but eventually he has to stop for breath. His heel hurts, where his shoe is rubbing it. He doesn’t have on socks. He’s wearing Jamie’s pants and shirt, and shoes that had needed replacing before he even met Jamie.

He orients himself, and he’s heading vaguely in the direction of Oak Lawn. And that’s…that’s no good. It’s too early; the neighborhood doesn’t wake up until well after noon on a Saturday morning. Even if he waits, that place has nothing for him but the opportunity to fuck or get fucked up, and as much as he wants that, he knows it’s a hole he’ll never dig himself out of if he starts.

He pushes off of the wall he’s leaning against and turns his steps more northward. Towards a once-fancy neighborhood of older houses, the sheltering canopies of live oak trees. Towards a door he hopes will always be open to him.

He knows where he’s going. It’ll take him half the day to walk there, but he has a destination.

 

============

 

Jamie searches, but there’s no sign of Tyler. He questions pedestrians on the streets, looking like a weirdo with his hair unbrushed and terror in his eyes. Nobody’s seen a boy with a pink Mohawk, with gentle eyes and a sweet smile, a wicked smirk and a soft touch. Nobody’s seen his Tyler.

He calls, but Tyler’s phone goes straight to message, like Tyler has turned it off.

He goes back up to the apartment and gets Marshall out of her crate. She’s still jumpy, not quite trustful of him, but she lets him pick her up and carry her to the truck.

He drives then, his phone in the cup-holder by his knee.

Tyler doesn’t reply. Not once.

The alarm goes off, that he should start his pre-game nap, and he ignores it. He drives by that steak house where Tyler sometimes gets dropped off, but there’s nothing on the other side of it but a church, some businesses that he can’t imagine Tyler being interested in (car rental, printing, a restaurant supply place) and then a vast sprawl of rundown little houses.

He can’t go door to door so he crisscrosses a few times and then turns back, tries to figure what path Tyler would take if he was headed to Deep Ellum. He stops at a red light and wants to pound the steering wheel. He would, except he brought Marshall and he’ll be damned if he scares her again.

He has to stop for gas, when he can’t find Tyler in Deep Ellum, when he isn’t at the pool hall or the burger joint. When he isn’t in Oak Lawn, in the Thai restaurant he suggested, or at the pizza place with the creative toppings.

He goes back to the apartment, parks on the street so he can snap Marshall’s collar on and let her walk. They go back up the elevator, trying to retrace Tyler’s steps, but there’s no sign.

His alarm goes off again, telling him to wake up. He carries Marshall over the broken glass from the coffee pot and puts her in her crate. She’ll probably piss on the cage floor before he can get back so he throws an extra towel down for her. That’s all he has time for before he changes into his game-day suit and heads out again.

He watches both sides of the road, hoping against hope that he’ll stumble into Tyler again, find him by dumb blind luck.

Wherever Tyler’s gone, it isn’t between the apartment and the AAC.

He hurries into the changing room nearly-late, gets a reproachful look from coach and captain both. He knows he looks like shit, ragged and worked up. He slips his jacket off of his shoulders and hangs it up. Other guys are in most of their gear. He’ll be lucky if they don’t scratch him. He keeps his head down and steps out of his pants. Unbuttons his shirt and puts it away.

He sees an incoming body out of the corner of his eye, and then there’s a stinging thump on the back of the junction of neck and shoulder, right…right at the place where Tyler bit him yesterday morning, where Tyler put his mouth when he was fucking between Jamie’s legs. The place Tyler may never fucking see or touch or kiss again in Jamie’s life.

“Your boyfriend a vampire, Benny?” Neal chirps, and Jamie turns, grabs him by the chest pads and slams him back into his stall.

“Don’t you fucking…” it’s on the tip of his tongue, _Don’t you fucking talk about him,_ but he can’t. They don’t know. Neal doesn’t know. He’s just trying to get under Jamie’s skin.

It’s working.

“Don’t you fucking touch me,” he says instead, and it feels dumb, hollow. They’re hockey players, they touch all the damn time. Neal’s eyes go wide, and Jamie thinks _Oh shit no, not now._

“Hey!” Modano is having none of this shit before a game, and Jamie’s cheeks burn with shame. “Save it for the other guys!”

Jamie resolves to shove it down and play the fucking game. He plays the first period in a daze, wondering if Tyler has called, if he’s texted. He gets bumped down to the third line, and can’t even protest it. He knows his play is off; he just can’t find his focus.

Larson lines up on his left, gives him a _what the hell is wrong with you_ glance, but he’s got his own game to worry about. John Scott sidles up to the line, big and ugly, grinning gap-toothed down at everybody, but Larson especially.

“Hey!” he calls at Larson, “Hey. How many guys you blow to get on this team?”

Larson ignores him, and Jamie tries to breathe, to not hear the things the guy is saying. He out-weights Larson by a good eighty pounds. Jamie’s a little closer but the guy is a monster-- taller, bigger, longer reach.

“I gotta big dick. Since suckin’ is all this team does, you catch me after the game,” Scott tells Larson and Jamie just loses it, loses the battle with sorrow and fear and anger that he’s been carrying since he got Tyler’s text.

“Hey!” Jamie’s stick hits the ice; he gives his gloves a little shake to get them loose.

“You lookin’ to fight a faggot, I’m right here.” He shoves against Scott’s chest and the man is like a wall-- no give at all.

This is the dumbest thing he’s done in a game in his fucking life, but he feels the adrenaline rising, feels like he’s _here_ for the first time all night.

Scott blinks at him. “Like for real?” He drifts back, away from Jamie’s anger.

Jamie’s momentum stumbles and he’s left with no opponent, no direction. He frowns, picks up his stick.

“Yeah for real. Fuck you.”

Scott shrugs. “My cousin’s gay.”

The whole thing is surreal. Both lines are looking at him, and if Scott had just fought him none of this would be happening. The puck drops and Jamie plays his shift. He can feel it though, the whispers going through the Stars bench, and the Wild’s. The feel of eyes on him until it feels like the entire stadium is turned his way.

The news is out before the game is over.

====================

Tyler is limping by the time he gets to Ron and David’s house, blisters on the backs of both heels and on the sides of his pinky toes. He’s sweaty and his hair is sticking to his forehead. The back of his neck and scalp have gotten enough sun to feel tight and hot. 

Ron and David’s boat of a car is at the curb, and Tyler breathes, breathes free again for the first time since he backed away from Jamie’s door.

The last shred of pride that he has disintegrates as he knocks, to be standing there with nothing but the clothes on his back when Ron opens the door. 

“Tyler?” Ron reaches for him, his gentle eyes filled with concern. 

“I’m not a whore,” Tyler says, throat dry and voice cracking. “I’m…I’m not.” His vision blurs and Ron draws him into the cool recess of the house.

“Oh, Tyler,” Ron says. “No, of course not, but even if you were…” like it wouldn’t matter to them, if he’d been selling his body, that they’d still welcome him in. 

David comes to the arch that leads down the hall to his den, cane in hand. “What’s happened?” 

“He…” Tyler gulps for air and Ron sits him down on the gold velvet couch. 

“Wait. Water first and then you can tell us.” 

Tyler is so grateful, for the moment to get his head together, to find the words to describe the hurt. 

Ron passes a tall glass with a harvest-gold floral pattern painted around the base into his hands and Tyler takes a sip, hands shaking. 

“Better?” Ron asks, while David stands like he’s waiting for a villain to go beat up.

“He…” Tyler starts again, and maybe the chance to compose himself was for nothing. “He thinks I’m a hooker. That he’s paying me.”

“Jamie?” David asks, and Tyler nods. 

“Yeah. He. You were right. Thinks he’s ‘buying my affections.’”

“He said this to you?” 

Tyler can’t meet David’s eyes. 

“Jamie. Him and his brother. They were yelling. Fighting. He said. He didn’t want a boyfriend. Wanted me. Because. Because I’m cheap.”

Ron sits down on the couch beside him. Tyler is all sweaty. He should take a shower, but he has nothing to change into. 

“I’ll kill this boy,” David announces, and Ron sighs.

“Kill him tomorrow; Tyler needs us now.”

He puts an arm around Tyler’s shoulders, slow like he thinks Tyler might shrug him off, might not want to be held. If so, he’s wrong, so wrong, and Tyler turns and leans into his bony shoulder, that high noise slipping from his throat again, a whine he can’t stop. Ron rubs his back. David disappears and comes back with a damp towel for Tyler to wipe his face with.

It’s just starting to sink in, how completely fucked he is. No backpack, no supplies, no phone, no money at all. He chokes that back, because he didn’t come here for cash and clothes, he came for…

David’s weathered hand rests on Tyler’s shoulder, and he knows the emotions-thing isn’t really in David’s wheelhouse, but he is trying, for Tyler, to give him some comfort on this shitty shitty day. 

“Where are you staying?” David asks, and Tyler can only shake his head. 

“Here then,” Ron decides, “For a few days at the very least. When did you eat last?”

It’s so easy, to let someone else make a choice for him. “Last night,” Tyler says. Close to eighteen hours ago, and he just walked a half-marathon to get here from Jamie’s. No wonder he feels hollow. 

Ron stands up and offers him a hand, and Tyler takes it, but even as bone-tired as he is he won’t let Ron lift any of his weight. 

“Take a quick shower and I’ll warm some soup,” Ron says, and he’s like the mom Tyler always wished his could have been. 

He goes to the bathroom, and nothing in his life has felt as good as slipping those sneakers off of his feet. After he’s clean he’ll ask for some Band-aids and ointment.

There is a soft knock on the door, and when he opens it, David hands him a stack of folded clothes. 

“They’re not fashionable like you young people wear, but they should get you through the night.”

Tyler takes the pile, baby blue button-down pajamas and a soft terrycloth robe. 

“Thanks,” he says, and he isn’t sure what he did to deserve these people, their kindness, but he is so glad to have it. “For…thanks.” 

David smiles a little sadly and nods. “Ron’ll have the soup when you’re done. Let us know if you need anything.”

Tyler closes the door again and strips off his (Jamie’s) shirt and sweats. There is a clack as the pants hit the tile and he frowns, reaches down and picks them up again. Keys. Fuck. He doesn’t. Can’t. Not right now. He stuffs them in the medicine cabinet to look at later, to try to figure out what the hell. 

He steps into the shower, washes off the sweat and salt and dust. Pours shampoo in his hand and scrubs the product out of his hair, watches the soft pink swirl of faintly-dyed water swirl down the drain. 

The fight leaves him, and he’s just tired. He dries off and puts on Ron’s pinstriped pajamas and wraps the robe around himself. Pads barefoot to the kitchen.

Ron has a place set for him at the table when he gets there, and he eats staring into space. Ron sits across from him, not pushing him to talk, but not leaving him alone either. 

“You can…whatever you were doing before I came,” Tyler says, feeling guilty, and Ron shakes his head. 

“I was just watching my game shows on television,” Ron tells him, “But if you’d rather I leave…”

Tyler winces. “It’s your kitchen,” he says, and Ron goes and gets a tea kettle out of a cabinet and puts some water on to boil. By the time Tyler has gotten the soup down, there is a cup of herbal tea in front of him. 

Tyler drinks, mostly to occupy his hands, to have a reason not to talk. When he’s done, it’s still early, but…

“Is it okay if I go sleep?” he asks, and Ron nods.

“Of course. We were going to go to church tomorrow, but one of us could stay, or you could come with us.”

Tyler shakes his head. 

“I don’t think I’ll be up to it.”

“Okay,” says Ron, easy as anything. “We’ll see you in the morning, then. If you want to, we can come get you after church and we’ll go out to lunch like old times.”

That gets a smile, however fragile it feels on Tyler’s lips. “Yeah. Like old times.”

He gathers the robe around his shoulders and shuffles off to bed. He wakes in the night, to the sound of Ron or David coughing in the dark. He stares at the ceiling for a long time. 

 

===========

 

“So, seriously?” Neal is sitting way too close to Jamie on the dressing room bench. The six to one loss was painful, humiliating, and Jamie isn’t sure if his coming out is to blame or they really were that bad. “You suck dick?” 

“Get. The fuck. Away from me,” Jamie growls, and Neal gapes at him, too dumb to recognize the danger he’s in. 

Jamie continues to tear at the laces on his skates. He needs to get out of here, needs to get home, take Marshall out, make another drive around town to see if Tyler has turned up anywhere. 

Modano comes up then, sends Neal away with a tilt of his head. He sits down beside Jamie, sighs like he can’t figure where to start.

“It’s true?” he asks, and Jamie could try to lie, but he’s always been shit at it. The truth will come out. He’s not together enough right now to hide it. 

“Yeah,” he says, and the team is all focused on him, some watching openly, some pretending not to. He turns his eyes back to his skates and keeps them there. Wonders if he should go somewhere else until the other guys have finished showering and changing. 

Modano nods. “Okay. Get cleaned up. I’ll let Marc know.”

By the time Jamie is back in street clothes, Coach Crawford has told Nieuwendyk and they’re asking for him to “Have a chat” before he heads home. 

“I need to call my agent,” he says at the threshold to the office, “My brother too, probably. My parents don’t…” and Crawford puts a hand on his shoulder. 

“You can do that in a minute,” he says, and Jamie nods even though he doesn’t want to. There’s another guy there, rumpled suit and with a laptop on top of a briefcase, like he rushed in on his night off.

“Is it true?” Nieuwendyk asks, “That you’re…” he makes a floppy-wristed gesture and Jamie’s teeth grind together. He feels his uncertainties resolve into rock-solid stubbornness, and he’s gonna fuck this up, fuck his career before it even starts. 

“Yeah.” He’s getting tired of saying it. “Yes. Sir.” It doesn’t sound any more polite that way.

“Would you be willing to say you’re not?” the new guy asks, and Jamie blows a hard breath out of his nose. 

“No.” Like when he came out to Jordie, the secret is fucking out there. He can lie and pretend or whatever—it’s still going to have to come out eventually. Better to do it all now, he thinks. His stomach twists; it’s gone beyond hungry and into a dull dizzy ache. He should have run through a drive-through on the way to the arena, should have just called in sick. This fucking day.

“Can you just not talk about it again? See if this dies down?” 

It’s a horrible idea; even Jamie can see that. 

“I’m not talking about it tonight,” he says, and that’s as far as he’ll go. “I need to call my agent and my family before I have anything else to say to anybody.” He’s not in a position to dictate terms to the fucking General Manager, but what the hell does the man expect? 

The guy with the laptop doesn’t look happy. Jamie doesn’t know if he’s a PR guy or a lawyer or what. 

Nieuwendyk frowns at him, and Coach shakes his head in disappointment. “We’ll have security get you past the reporters,” he promises. “Come in an hour early before practice tomorrow; we need to have a talk about the way you played today.”

And that Jamie can talk about. “Yeah. I know. It won’t…” 

“Tomorrow,” Coach cuts him off, and his tone isn’t entirely unkind. 

So Jamie goes. There is a pair of security guys outside the office and they walk him through. Jamie can hear reporters calling his name, and a couple have figured out how to get to the parking garage gate to scream questions at him. 

“Are you gay? Is it true?” 

A valet pulls Jamie’s beat-up old truck to the door and Jamie slides behind the wheel. Breathes freely for the first time tonight.

Just a quick tour around, see if he sees Tyler, he thinks, but his body is on autopilot, and by the time he pulls up to his parking garage, he can’t bring himself to go out again. Besides, Marshall is home; Marshall needs him. 

It’s well after midnight when he’s got her cage cleaned and the broken glass swept up, finished off his post-game protein shakes and Gatorade. 

“C’mon girl,” he says, turning out the lights. She turns circles in confusion as he goes to the bedroom, not used to being out of the crate after bedtime. He picks her up because she’s still too small to jump up to the bed, and tucks her in under his arm as he lays down. “’S gonna be okay,” he promises, but he doesn’t believe it at all.

============

Tyler listens to the sounds of Ron and David getting ready for church, the showers running and the frying pan clanking on the oven burners in the kitchen.

David knocks on the door before they go, and Tyler croaks out a “Yeah?”

“We’ll be back by eleven,” he says, and Tyler knows it’s an invitation to go with, even if he’ll make them late. Knows it’s an offer for them to stay, but he needs the half-day to get himself together almost as much as he’s reluctant to disrupt their schedules any more than he has.

“I’ll see you then.”

The front door opens and closes a little later, and Tyler crawls out of bed. He needs to get up, needs to move. Ron said they’d go out for lunch, but maybe he can put together something in the crock pot for dinner. He heads to the bathroom first though, because he’s got morning business to take care of.

His reflection catches his eye as he’s washing his hands and he stops, stares at himself. He feels like he should know this boy in the mirror better. The little scar on his chin and another in his left eyebrow, he knows where those came from, but it feels like a story he heard from someone else. The sad flop of hair is pathetic instead of defiant, no longer a flag to wave at the world saying _hate me if you want but you’ll sure as hell notice me_.

The boy looks lost, caught between child and adult, colors too bright for the tired ache in his eyes.

Tyler pulls out the drawer. Ron has bought and kept every useless kitchen appliance known to man, from a fondue pot to an electric turkey-carving knife. There has to be something here that’ll do the job Tyler needs. He digs through the piles of ancient crap under the sink, wonders vaguely who used to use a curling iron? He finds a pair of scissors, rusty freckles on the blades from being in the damp for too long, and he leaves them out in case he can’t find anything better.

He feels guilty sneaking into Ron and David’s bathroom, but he’ll just borrow what he needs, put it back when he’s done.

He finally finds electric clippers, so old that he’s a little scared to plug the thing into the wall outlet. It doesn’t zap him though. He takes another breath and just stands there, feels the weight of it in his hand. The weight of change. He slides the guard to the next-to-shortest setting and pushes the switch to ‘on’. It starts to buzz and he hopes it’s working.

The first strand of hair falls like candy-colored dandelion fluff, drifting down to the tile by his feet. The second is easier to bring himself to do, the damage already done. The buzz of the clippers turns into a grind as it runs down the line of Tyler’s hair. The roots have grown in enough since Kendra colored it that there is just a hint of paler hair left, not enough to even see what color it was. He uses the mirror, but works mostly by feel, one hand cupped around the front of the clippers, guiding each pass, the center stripe widening out to match the rest of his hair to the new length.

Pink and magenta and purple hairs fall over the light blue shoulders of his pajamas. Settle by his feet.

The boy in the mirror becomes a man, the lines of his face falling into place without the Mohawk, stark and strong. He’s no less handsome now, but he looks somehow older.

He’s not Jamie’s Tyler anymore.

============

Jamie wakes up to pounding on his front door and his first thought is “Tyler!”

Marshall panics and scrambles for the edge of the bed and he puts her down before she can fall off the side, and then he’s rushing for the door.

Jordie lets himself in before Jamie has crossed the living room. He looks like shit, eyes wide and hair mussed like he rolled out of bed and got in the car.

“Wha?” Jamie doesn’t even know what time it is.

“Mom called me!” Jordie yells at him, rushes in and grabs him, yanks him into a hug. “You weren’t answering your god damn phone!”

Jamie frowns. “Shit. I thought I could call them in the morning.” He’s not even sure where his phone is. Maybe still in his truck. The last he can remember looking at it was there, checking to see if Tyler had called.

“Idiot,” Jordie says, but he looks too relieved to put much heat behind it. “Some fucking reporter called them. This wasn’t how they were supposed to find out.”

Jamie sits down heavily on the couch, calls Marshall to him and scritches her until she calms down. “Shit. What the hell. I’m a rookie on one of the worst fucking teams in the league. How is my sex life _news_?”

Jordie sighs, sits down beside him. “You’re the first, Jamie. That’s news.” He pulls out his phone, calls their parents even though it’s like…Jamie cranes his neck to see the microwave. Four AM. Fuck.

“Mom. Yeah. I got him. He’s okay.” Jordie’s voice is soft, and Jamie ducks his head at the thought he had his family that worried. They talk a little more, Jordie reassuring her and then talking to their dad for a moment. Jamie closes his eyes and wonders if he’s going to get any sleep at all before he has to be in for practice. Fuck.

Jordie puts his phone away. “Have you called your agent?”

“Tomorrow,” Jamie promises.

Jordie frowns but doesn’t push it. He pauses though, and looks around.

“Where’s your boy?”

“Gone,” Jamie croaks. Marshall whines like she understands his sorrow.

“What?” Jordie asks, anger in the word. “You come out and he just leaves you?”

Jamie shakes his head. He can’t even really be pissed at Jordie. It wasn’t his words that drove Tyler away. “No. He left this morning. He. He heard us. Heard me, what I said.”

“Shit,” Jordie says, sits down beside him.

Jamie takes a shuddering breath.

“Hey. I got skate tomorrow. Early, because I fucked up tonight,” Jamie says.

“Okay,” Jordie says. “You want me to crash here, drive you in in the morning?”

Jamie nods, leans back against the couch. Maybe he’ll just sleep here.

“C’mon,” Jordie says, and scoops Marshall out of his arms. He goes to put her in her crate but Jamie stops him.

“Nah, I’ll bring her with me.”

“You’re gonna spoil her,” Jordie warns, but Jamie just shrugs. Of all the problems in his life right now, Marshall getting used to sleeping in the bed is the least of them.

===========

Tyler weighs the keys in his hands, looks up at Jamie’s building. Behind him, Ron and David wait in the car. Ten minutes, he told them. He pushes the button on the clicker, and the gate opens. He feels like a secret agent or something, with his hair so different, wearing clothes that Ron helped him pick out at half-price-Wednesday at the Salvation Army-- a long-sleeve Henley under a slim-cut sports jacket, jeans that fit looser than he’s used to.

He goes up in the elevator and heads to the garage. Jamie is supposed to be in Anaheim overnight, and Tyler has spent a week remembering things that are in his bag, things that aren’t easy to replace. A slip of paper with his mom’s new address on it. Pictures of his sisters. His good boots. Nothing of great value, but his.

He checks and Jamie’s truck isn’t in the garage. Jordie’s car isn’t either, and Tyler feels a genuine wash of relief at that.

He goes around to Jamie’s door then, takes a deep breath and knocks hard, three times. Marshall doesn’t bark. Nobody moves around inside. He puts key to lock and it turns. Okay. Shit. He can do this. It just hurts, coming back to a place he had once thought could be home, knowing now that it never was.

Marshall’s cage is empty, but the bowl of water is fresh, clean. Tyler trusts Jamie enough, despite the way things went down at the end, to think he really likes her and wouldn’t have gotten rid of her, at least not so fast. Boarding, probably, Tyler thinks, and it’s easier for him this way, not to have to decide if he wants to take her with him. Ron and David had said he could bring her, but he’s not sure how long their offer of a place to crash is open for, how long it’ll be before he’s scrambling for places to sleep with a half-grown dog in tow. It was cooler this morning, cool enough to wear a jacket.

He looks around, and his backpack is sitting in the middle of the couch, like it’s on display. He glances over his shoulder, because everything about this feels like a trap. There is a sheet of white notebook paper folded and tucked into the front clasp.

Tyler grabs the paper in one hand, the pack in the other. He thinks about all that money under the bathroom sink, nearly fifteen hundred dollars. It would make things so much easier. He could buy a bus ticket south, could rent a hotel room for a month and a half.

But if he takes that money, that Jamie thought he was buying sex with, that makes Tyler what Jamie said he was. It’s stubborn, and stupid. It’s just money; it would spend just fine. But Tyler would know where it came from, and he would feel dirty. It would be harder, the next time some guy offers him cash for a blowjob, to say no.

There’s nothing more for him here, so he leaves.

Jamie’s key is heavy in his hand as he locks up behind him, and he doesn’t know what to do with it so he puts it back in his pocket.

The door to the garage is opening as he passes on his way to the garage. The neighbor, Mark, skims his eyes over Tyler like he’s never seen him before, like he sees nothing of interest. Tyler’s jaw tenses, but Mark doesn’t speak, doesn’t even look him over as he turns on his way to his own apartment, his own life.

Tyler goes down and slides into the back seat of the car and Ron waits until his seatbelt is fastened until he pulls away from curb.

“Did you find everything you need?” David asks, and Tyler nods.

“Marshall wasn’t there. He put all my stuff together.” Tyler thought it was a sitcom thing, the box of personal possessions being returned after a relationship was over. TV breakups never have a note though, and he pulls it out of his jacket pocket and unfolds it.

It’s…a mess. There is a center part, that looks like where Jamie started, neat print in blue pen. But down the side there is more written in black, the handwriting jittery, like Jamie was tired or drunk when he did it. Little notes are added to the center, crammed in between the lines, arrows showing where Tyler should read them.

 _Tyler,_ The main part of the note begins, _I fucked up. In so many ways. I never thought you were with me for money._ He follows an arrow to a penciled-in _(not counting that first night when I didn’t even know you and you were so fucking hot and I couldn’t figure out why you would want sex with me if it wasn’t a money thing)_.

Tyler blinks and tries to keep reading the original text, like Jamie wrote it the first time.

_I should have kicked Jordie out earlier before it came to that. I should have told you earlier that I love you. I should have told Jordie that I love you. I just got so mad that he was calling you that and I lost my temper at him. (I said stupid things) I am sorry. So fucking sorry._

The pen changes and continues on, _I want to beg you to come home. Even if you’re not coming home to me. I’m so worried right now. You left all your stuff. I don’t know what to do. (I can’t find you) It hurts to not know if you’re safe. I want to beg you to come home, but it’s really shitty here right now. I came out and there are all these reporters and they would be shitty to you._

He turns the page and reads down the side, _Marshall is fine. She misses you but she’s safe and I’ve got a place to board her when I’m away and a dog walker to come over when I’m playing in Dallas. If you want her you can have her. I just want you happy. Just call me or leave a note or ANYTHING and I’ll get her to you I promise. I won’t steal your dog but I know she makes things hard (I can keep her until you’re ready, as long as it takes)._

And then across the bottom, _Fuck, Tyler I fucking love you I’m so sorry I fucked it all up_.

Tyler rereads the note over and over on the way back to the house. Boils it down to the three important factors:

Marshall is safe, and Jamie will keep her. Tyler thought so, but it’s good to have it confirmed, good to have Jamie’s promise.

Jamie says he loves him. That. It seems so impossible. He thinks about the times when they weren’t fucking. Just laying around on the couch, curling up together in bed. He wants, so badly, to believe Jamie.

Jamie came out. And Tyler loved him, loves him, enough to ache for him, for shy quiet Jamie shoved into the spotlight like that.

Tyler has a lot to think about. Maybe he fucked up, leaving without talking to Jamie. Maybe he made mistakes. Before he can think about that though, he needs to see if Jamie is okay. He can’t call, and he isn’t sure he’s ready to be there when Jamie gets home, even if reporters ambushing him wasn’t a threat.

“Can we…can we go by the library on the way back?” Tyler asks, “I need to check the internet for a minute.”

“Of course,” Ron says, “That would be fine. There’s a novel I was wanting to check out; David and I can look for it while you’re on the computer.”

=============

For the first week, Jamie tries “No comment” and “I’m just here to play hockey.”

Every time a reporter gets within ten feet of him there’s a microphone out, a voice calling “Jamie, what’s it like to be a gay hockey player? How are your teammates taking it? Have you heard the trade rumors?”

“I’m just here to play,” he says for the millionth time, words repeated so many times that they make no sense anymore, gibberish sounds that just make the questions louder, ruder.

“You’re going to have to give an interview,” his agent tells him. He doesn’t _have_ to do anything.

“They’ll keep hounding you until you do,” his sister says when he dares to call her (after she gives him the worst scolding of his life for not calling their parents and warning them). “At least this way you can pick who you want to talk to.”

Jamie tries to choose, but he’s busy as fuck trying to be the best player he can be. He’s not really scared of a trade. Dallas is scraping the salary floor and they’re strapped for funds. They won’t trade him for anybody with a higher salary hit, and there aren’t many up for trade with a lower. He expects some sort of blowback from his team. There are some cold shoulders, some rearranging of the locker room seating order when he’s not there. Most of them just kind of grumble about the media’s focus on not-hockey and go on with it.

He’s leaving morning skate when his phone rings, a number he doesn’t know. He answers it with his thumb over the end-call button.

“Hello?” Media ambushes have made him wary.

“Is this Jamie Benn?”

“Yeah. Who’s this?” He feels like he should recognize the voice.

“This is Sean. Avery. Robidas gave me your number.”

Jamie shakes his head. Sean Avery.

“What the fuck are you doing, kid? Are you trying to make this as bad as it can possibly be?”

“What?”

“Look,” Avery tells him. “I’m gonna text you some numbers. You need a PR person. At least to consult with. You need to take control of this thing, and I’ve got a reporter from The Advocate that would love to talk to you. He’ll give you the fairest interview you can hope for.”

Jamie closes his eyes. He had hoped this would all blow over, all go away. Sean is talking like he’s in for a long ride.

“Benn.” Sean calls his name, not unkindly. “Look. Like it or not, you’re in this now. You keep on top of it or it’s gonna grind you into the dirt. You call the numbers I send you. They’re waiting to hear from you.”

He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t have to. He’s gotta do what he can to not let it fuck up his life.

“I’ll call,” he says. His “Thanks,” is a little late, a little forced, but he’ll call.

=============

 

Ken is nice, bright and open and cheerful. Jamie tries not to resent the fact that he’s going to be the one digging into Jamie’s private life, exposing enough that the rest of the reporters will leave him alone. They’re in one of the Stars’ private conference rooms at the front offices. Jamie wore a suit, slicked his hair back to try to get it under control. He keeps flexing his hands, pulling the skin tight over his knuckles, still bruised from a fight two days ago.

There’s a camera man, unobtrusive behind his equipment. It feels like Jamie and Ken are the only ones in the room, the only people in the building.

“Are you ready for us to turn this on?” Ken asks, after they’ve shaken hands and Jamie drank a cup of water.

“Yeah.” He nods. It isn’t going to get any easier, putting it off for a few more minutes.

A little red light goes on, and Ken leans back.

“I’m sitting here today with Jamie Benn, the first NHL hockey player to openly identify himself as gay. So Jamie, how’s this first week been?”

“Yeah, okay,” Jamie says. He can hear himself, just can’t think of anything better to say.

Ken nods like that wasn’t completely inane. “Can you tell us a little bit about why you chose to come out?”

“Uh. I didn’t, really,” Jamie starts, and Ken gives him a look that makes it clear that he needs more than that. “I didn’t choose. It just. Sort of came out. I’d had a really bad day and there were some words said on the ice, not thinking that anybody was really gay, but it rubbed me wrong. After I spoke up, the guy wasn’t having it. Wouldn’t fight me. And then everybody was talking.”

“This was John Scott?” Ken asks, and Jamie nods. He doesn’t want anybody to get into trouble.

“He said his cousin’s gay. He was just chirping, trying to get a rise.”

“Are you used to that? Hearing language like that? Does it bother you?”

Jamie looks at his hands. Sean had called him again, after he’d set up the appointments. Talked about what he wanted to do with this ‘opportunity’. Jamie had said he wanted to help people. It’s an easier goal to focus on than helping himself.

“Yeah, I hear it. And it is pretty sh—crappy. Not so much for me, because I can stand up for myself, and my team has my back. But it makes me really mad, for the kids that aren’t safe. Kids that hear that kind of thing at school or on the streets. Kids that can’t defend themselves from bullies or their parents or other people that are in a real position to hurt them.”

Ken leans forward, like he can get his teeth into this. “Do you see a solution? Could the league do more than it has?”

Jamie shakes his head. “I dunno. That’s not my job. I think change is gonna start in the room though. Captains and Alternates, coaches. From PeeWee on up. They’ve gotta watch for it, watch out for their players that might not be able to talk about themselves like that.”

“How long have you known? About your sexuality?”

Jamie flushes to hear it talked about like that. He shrugs. “I dunno. I mean. There were girls, but it was always a struggle. Trying to be something I wasn’t.”

Ken nods, sympathetic. “Have you had a chance, to date men?”

“I…” Jamie thinks of Tyler, those few unguarded moments that were like magic. “Once. We uh. Broke up recently.”

“So you’re single now?”

Jamie shakes his head. “No. I mean, I am, but I’m not looking to date anybody else, not anytime soon.”

“If you were,” Ken pushes, “What do you look for in a guy?”

Jamie laughs, rubs a hand over his face. “I dunno. Chemistry.”

“Have you ever found a teammate attractive?”

Jamie cringes. “Ugh. No. That would be really weird.”

“Never?”

“No. Never.”

Jamie shakes his head, lets how gross hockey dudes are show on his face.

Ken grins, tv-handsome and plastic.

“Would you go get a drink with me, after the interview?”

Jamie can’t tell how serious he is, but it doesn’t matter.

“No. Thanks. I need to go home and walk the dog.”

 

================

Tyler takes out the earbuds and puts his head in his hands. Oh, Jamie.

 

==============

Ron and David are being weird, in the days after their orphan’s Thanksgiving, and Tyler doesn’t know what it means. He’s been trying, to pull his weight around the house. He’s kept himself busy, with repair jobs that David hasn’t been able to do, or cleaning things that have gotten away from Ron. He’s tried to go to bed when they do, or stay out all night instead so nobody has to get up in the middle of the night to let him in. He helps with the cooking and raked up, no lie, thirty bags of leaves from the yard. He goes with Ron to the grocery store and goes with them to doctors appointments and church to help David get in and out of the car without Ron having to lift so much.

Something has changed though; there have been significant looks between the two older men, David calling Ron into his office and closing the door, phone calls that David puts on hold until he can go to a room where Tyler isn’t.

Tyler starts keeping his bag packed, keeps his good boots beside it. He doesn’t think he’s given them a reason to kick him out, but it doesn’t have to be personal; there doesn’t have to be a reason. Like maybe it’s just costing too much to feed him and buy him clothes. Maybe they’re not comfortable with a long-term guest.

He volunteered for a Habitat for Humanity thing the church is doing, going to homes of some poor or elderly neighbors and helping them weatherproof the houses for winter. He’s not sure how he’ll get to it if he’s not living at a fixed location, how he’ll find a ride when he doesn’t know where he’s sleeping. He thinks about dropping out, but figures he can wait until the last minute if it comes to that.

He’s not surprised, when David asks him to have a seat one morning after breakfast, after the dishes have been cleared away and the table wiped down.

“This isn’t an ultimatum,” David says, his hand resting on a folded piece of paper. “This is not a list of conditions you have to meet to stay here.”

That…doesn’t help Tyler relax at all, actually.

“Tyler,” Ron says, and Tyler looks at him. “This is a list, of the good things we think you deserve. That we’d like to try to help you get. We’d like to talk about it. See what your goals are. If there are things you want that we didn’t think of. But this…you don’t have to. We can leave this tabled for a week or a month or indefinitely. You are welcome here. You’re so much help that I don’t know how we managed before you.”

David looks less sure, and Tyler turns to him, asks without words if this is true.

David sighs. “We aren’t as young as we used to be. We’d like to help you, to be ready if something happens to us. We don’t want to push you, but this,” he turns the paper over in his hands, fidgets with the corner, “These are things we’d like to do for you, that we’d like to help you get. As much of it as you’re ready for right now.”

“Can I…can I see what’s on it?” Tyler asks, and David’s stern face softens.

“Of course.”

He unfolds the paper, and passes it to Tyler. There are five items written in his spidery hand.

The bullet points start fairly insignificant and quickly escalate:

-Bedroom empty and redecorate

-Winter wardrobe

-High School Diploma

-Immigration issues

-Health status/checkup/tests

“This…” Tyler doesn’t know where to start. Yeah, the bedroom he can start stripping down if they want him to. He’s got as much clothes as he can fit in his bag, between what he got from Jamie’s place and what they bought him in the meantime. He’s not even sure why that’s on the list. The next two, he has no idea where to start on.

And the last item. He knows what they mean by tests. That he’s done dirty things, that a lot of people have touched him and not all of them were clean.

“I. I don’t know how to…” he wants to throw the list at them, wants to scream with frustration. He’s fucking this up too and doesn’t know how to…

“Tyler,” Ron’s voice stops his freakout before it can come to a head, before he can _do_ anything. “We’re here to help you with this. You don’t have to tackle this on your own. We don’t have a lot of money, but we have time, and the motivation to help you as much as we can.”

Tyler’s finger lingers on the last item. “There’s a clinic. I see posters in the bathrooms at the clubs. They do the STI tests for free.”

Ron nods. “That’s a good start. When was the last time you saw a real doctor?”

Tyler folds the corner of the page over, creases it down with his thumbnail. “Boston. A couple years ago. Before that, it was a physical, for hockey.”

“If you want, it might be easier to start writing down your medical history,” Ron suggests, and Tyler nods. He doesn’t really want to think about it all, but he will. He moves up the list to the immigration problem.

“I can’t fix this. I can’t…maybe I could get a good set of fake ID?”

“We had a thought on that,” David says, and Tyler shuts up to let him tell it. David looks shifty, almost embarrassed. “We know things are rough with your family. How would you feel about adoption.”

A surprised laugh slips from Tyler’s lips. “What? I turn eighteen in just over two months.”

David nods like they knew that, and Tyler realizes he’s told them already.

“We’d have to wait until then, so the application isn’t caught in the system when you become legally adult,” David explains, “But we’d like to do it as an adult adoption. Ron doesn’t have any children, so it’s an option for inheritance purposes, and would give you a path to citizenship.”

“Shit,” Tyler breathes, overwhelmed by the idea of it. He catches himself too late, winces “Sorry.”

“It’s kind of a big deal,” Ron says, ignoring the profanity.

“Think about it,” David counsels. “Don’t decide anything today.”

Tyler nods, feeling a little dizzy with the thought of it. That they _want_ him. Want to keep him. Like family. Like forever.

“I’m not going back to high school,” he says. Pushing the limits because he can’t fucking stop himself, but also because he can’t even imagine it, being around kids like that, who have never seen the things he has, so clean and dumb and innocent.

“There’s an online program,” Ron says. “If you want. We could get a computer here, and the internet. You could go at your own pace.”

Tyler shrugs. Fuck it. If that’s the thing they’re wanting, with all that they’re offering, he would have to be an asshole to say no. “I’m not like book-smart,” he cautions, “But I’ll try.”

“That’s all we could ever ask for,” Ron says.

Later, as Tyler is packing up the floral bedspread for charity, he thinks about Jamie, and the note he left. _Love_ the word had read, the shaky ones like Jamie couldn’t help but put them down. _I fucking love you_ and Tyler can’t go back yet. He’s not a hooker, and he doesn’t need Jamie or his money. He’s made it through on his own for long enough to know that. Jamie makes it too easy though, with his generous heart. If Tyler looks like he needs something or even just wants it, then Jamie will give, and it’ll get all tangled up again.

He thinks about David’s list, and the person he’ll be, working on getting it done. Maybe the kind of guy that can be an outed hockey player’s boyfriend. The kind Jordie won’t hate just because of what he is. He tries to picture it, and he thinks he’d like to be that guy, with or without Jamie in his life.

====================

Jamie pulls into the parking garage and walks past Jordie’s car on the way through. He knows it’s been hard on his brother, spending as much time in Dallas as he can, making the hour drive up to Allen three or four times a week, going on road trips with his own team and then driving back down. He’s not sure how to tell Jordie to stop though, not when the apartment is so cold and empty to come back to when he’s gone, not like a home at all without Tyler there.

So he’s expecting Jordie to be hanging out, sitting on his couch. What comes as a surprise is the pile of loose cash in front of him, curling bills refusing to stack nicely, and…rolls of toilet paper?

“Jordie?” Jamie asks, trying to make sense of it. “Uh, whatcha got there?”

“This isn’t yours?” Jordie asks, but like he knows the answer.

“No…”

Jordie frowns. “Your boy. He came and got his stuff, you said.”

“Tyler,” Jamie corrects. He might not be Jamie’s anymore, but he has a fucking name.

“Tyler,” Jordie agrees. He gestures at all the money. “I was changing the roll, and twenties fell out of the new one, so I went digging through to the back of the cabinet. This. There’s like fifteen hundred dollars here.”  
Jamie winces. He’s not sure exactly how much money he left out for Tyler. A hundred or so every time he went away, twenties dropped almost daily in the bowl. Subtract out the money that Jamie knows Tyler spent, the shopping trip to Target, the food that appeared that Jamie didn’t have on the grocery-delivery. Takeout that Tyler didn’t ask Jamie to open his wallet for, and this…this has to be close to what’s left. Tyler spent nearly nothing.

“Put it back,” Jamie says, and Jordie looks up at him. “I’m fucking serious. It’s his. It was a gift. A bunch of little gifts. If he needs it enough to come back for it, I want that money just where he left it.” The weather has turned cold during the first week of December. Nothing compared to some of the cities Jamie’s traveling to, but it’s dipping below freezing at night. Jamie is sick at the idea of Tyler sleeping outdoors in it, Tyler doing things he doesn’t want to just to avoid that.

“Why would he have left it?” Jordie asks, and Jamie doesn’t want to have this conversation, doesn’t want to fight with his brother.

“Because he’s not a fucking hooker, dumbass. He heard us and he. God, I can’t even…”

“I thought…” Jordie hesitates. “Jamie, you have to know what it looked like…”

“But it wasn’t,” Jamie insists and Jordie hangs his head.

“You’re right. I didn’t…I just saw some guy that I thought was taking advantage of my baby brother, who is sometimes too nice for his own good, and I jumped to conclusions.”

“Damn right you did,” Jamie snaps, and Jordie nods.

“I fucked up.”

“Yeah.”

Jordie’s confession takes some of the bite out of Jamie’s anger.

“So what’re you going to do?”

“About _what_ ” Jamie asks through clenched teeth. “He’s gone and probably not coming back. He isn’t answering the phone or the texts I’ve sent him.”

Jamie sits down in one of the chairs, pinches between his eyes. He wants Tyler back, but he’d take knowing where he is, that he’s somewhere safe.

“Have you looked for him?”

Jamie rolls his eyes. God, Jordie is trying to be helpful.

“I’ve looked everywhere,” Jamie complains. “Every place we ever went to eat, everywhere we played pool, the grocery store, all the bars and clubs he can get into, Deep Ellum and Oak Lawn both. I found some friends of his. I’m not sure if they hadn’t seen him or just wouldn’t tell me if they had.”

He’d given Dion and Eduardo all the cash he’d had on him anyway. He’s not sure if they thought he was trying to bribe them, but they’d taken it.

 _”If you see him, let him know he can call me. I don’t. I know he doesn’t owe me anything. I just worry.”_ Dion had nodded, stoic, and Eduardo had frowned at Jamie like he’d heard the whole story of what an asshole he’d been.

“Have you thought? About calling in a professional?”

“Huh?”

“At finding people.”

“No.” Jamie is firm on that. “No. I am not sending a freakin’ PI bounty hunter whatever after him. No. Sans.”

Jordie looks at him like he’s being intentionally difficult.

“No,” Jamie repeats. He means it.

====================

“I’m. I’m not good with needles.”

The rubber strap around Tyler’s upper arm pinches. The guy with the needle is huge, tall as Jamie and built like a fifty-gallon drum. His teeth are crooked but his smile is kind.

“Take your time. Deep breaths. I haven’t had someone pass out on me in three months. Don’t break my streak, okay?”

Tyler does as he’s told, almost wishing he hadn’t asked Ron sit out in the waiting room until it was over.

It’s not getting any easier, so he nods. “Do it.”

The needle finds a vein, a prick and then the little vial starts to fill with the dark red of Tyler’s blood. He swallows hard and has to look away. It feels weird is all, the needle hanging out inside his skin, and it’s almost like he can feel his blood going into it. The pressure is weird, sickening.

The clinic guy reaches up and unties the rubber strap and the blood goes out faster and Tyler looks up at the flickering fluorescent light in the corner.

He doesn’t faint.

===================

Jamie’s determination not to have Tyler professionally stalked lasts until the middle of December, when a cold snap drops the temperature into the teens and Dallas freaks the fuck out, schools closing, bridges shut down, roads frozen and the best the city has to deal with it is gravel trucks to grit the intersections.

If Tyler is out in this, he’s fucked, and the shelters aren’t much better. He imagines Tyler with his pink hair and sharp smile, a bright spark in a room full of dirty tired men.

The police find a teenage prostitute dead in an abandoned car, and Jamie catches half the report on the news in the DFW airport, can’t quiet the pounding in his chest until he can find it on his phone and read the rest. Hispanic. Female. Not Tyler, not Tyler, not Tyler. Jesus.

He spends a day off calling half a dozen private investigators. Four of them turn him down. “Not my thing, missing persons,” is the usual reason. “Hard to get results and nobody wants to pay to hear there’s no progress.”

The fifth one sits and listens and shakes his head. “Keep your money. Kids like that, they don’t want to be found.”

The sixth one is a tall blond woman named Gwen, and Jamie starts off the meeting saying he knows it’s a long shot, knows he doesn’t have much for her to go on.

“I’m willing to pay for you to do your best,” he says when she tears the sheet of notes out of her book, folds it and slides it across the table to him. She’s not taking the job and he just. He doesn’t know what to do. “I know guys like Tyler are slippery. I know it’s going to be a hard job. Please. Please.”

She narrows her eyes like she’s got x-ray vision and can see through his brain.

“Here’s the deal,” she says, hands flat on the table. She’s as tall as Jamie and he probably only outweighs her by twenty pounds. The way she moves, he would put money on her in just about any kind of fight that wasn’t on ice. “I’m not in the business of finding people that don’t want to be found. In my experience, boyfriends leave for a reason. If he’s hiding from you, it’s probably a good reason.”

“He’s not. I mean, I don’t think he is. I don’t think he’s scared, and if he is, you can handle it however you feel is best for him, okay? I just need to know if he’s dead or alive. If he’s in trouble. If he needs help and he’s just being too damn stubborn for his own good.”

Gwen stares him down, but Jamie won’t look away.

“Ten grand buys you a month of work,” she says. “If I find him sooner, and he’s happy to hear from you, I’ll get you a check for the balance. If I find out he’s actively hiding from you, I’m giving him whatever’s left over and helping him go so deep you’ll be the only one who ever heard of him.”

“Fine,” Jamie agrees, easily, eagerly. “Please. Whatever he needs, okay? He doesn’t have to call me. You don’t have to tell me where he is, where he’s staying. Just that he’s okay or not.”

She takes his check and promises to let him know in a week.

 

=================

“I’m not looking to date anybody else, not anytime soon.”

Jamie on the screen looks tired, trapped. Not happy even though he’s trying to keep himself neutral, professional.

Tyler grounds himself with a deep breath, feels his roots settle, knows he’s safe and sheltered and wanted here. He clicks on ‘play again’ and rewatches the whole interview. Jamie talking about the bad day that started it all, the day Tyler left. Talking about kids like Tyler, dealing with assholes that have the ability to back their hateful words up with real harm.

He watches Jamie’s eyes, as he talks about someone special, that he’s not in a relationship with anymore, and it’s possible, but Tyler doesn’t think it’s likely that Jamie fell in and out of love in the few weeks it’s been since Tyler left.

Ron settles into the kitchen chair beside him. Tyler resists the urge to click away or close the laptop. Ron watches the end of the interview with him, Jamie talking about hockey and the language he hears on the ice. They cut it with clips of Jamie’s fights, three of them so far this season. In another interview Jamie had done they asked him about it, if he thinks he’s fighting more because he’s gay.

“If you’d told me when I was your age, that a boy that plays hockey would tell the world he’s queer, I never would have believed it,” Ron says. Tyler glances at him. He wants to say, that this is the Jamie he used to know, the Jamie he loved. Loves. It sounds crazy though, that a NHL player could ever have been with a boy like Tyler.

“He seems like a brave young man,” Ron muses, and Tyler presses his lips together.

“He just messed up. Said something he shouldn’t have and then had to deal with it.”

“Not that,” Ron says. “Although it takes courage to handle that part of it.”

Tyler cocks his head, turns his attention from the screen.

“The way he talks about his lover. To even mention matters of the heart to the media. The way he talks about the most vulnerable members of the community. A man like that, with all the advantages he has, it would be easy to only see how this will change his life. I’m impressed, that he can speak so eloquently on the suffering of others.”

Tyler starts the video over.

“His lover must have been an impressive person,” Ron muses, and then gets up. He pats Tyler’s shoulder, once, and then goes back out to whatever he’d been doing before.

Tyler watches the video twice more. Looks for any lie in Jamie’s words. He doesn’t say a lot about his ex, but there is no shame in his face or his voice. Regret maybe. Like he cared. Like he cared about Tyler.

 

================

“I know you’re Canadian, Jamie, and this is less of an issue for you, but how do you feel about queer America’s fight for gay marriage?”

Jamie snorts. “I couldn’t give two shits. Seriously.”

The ‘interviewer’ looks to Jamie’s image consultant, who calls a time-out.

“Okay, seriously, please never say that at an actual interview.”

Jamie frowns. Mock interviews are like his least favorite thing this week. Joanne presents them like a preemptive strike, that if they uncover all his danger zones before some reporter asks, then they won’t have to do days or weeks of damage control. Sean said this part was imperative, to keep him from putting his foot in it. Still, sometimes he’d just like to use his own damn words.

“I just don’t care,” Jamie says again, and they can’t make him care, and he won’t lie that it’s a priority.

Joanne sips at her water like she wishes it was vodka. “Explain it to me. We need to have an alternate dialog if that’s how you feel.”

Jamie nods, jaw working as he looks for the words. “I just think there are more important things for ‘queer America’ to worry about y’know? There are thousands of homeless kids out there, queer kids from fucked-up families or no families or families that make home a shittier option than whoever picks them up off the street. Fuck marriage. Seriously. These kids are dying.”

Joanne sits back, considers. “Okay. Leave off the ‘fuck marriage’ bit. And the not giving two shits. Start at the ‘more important things’ part.” She nods to the assistant who is reading the questions.

“Okay, again.”

“I know you’re Canadian, Jamie, and this is less of an issue for you, but how do you feel about queer America’s fight for gay marriage…”

===========

“Happy birthday,” Eduardo says, pulling the door of Tyler’s room closed behind them - Tyler’s room all in blue and sandy beige, with his laptop on the dresser and his clothes in the drawers. Outside, they can hear the sounds of the ‘little get-together’ still going on, people Tyler knows from church mostly, some folk he met doing the Habitat weekend.

Dion digs in the pocket of his jacket and comes out with a small bottle of rum, barely enough to get one of them drunk. Tyler splits it between their three red Solo cups, adding it to the pink punch with raspberry sherbet floating in it that Ron made for the occasion.

The first sip is horrible, like a too-sweet Sunrise and Tyler isn’t the only one making a face. They laugh though, and get it down. Dion sits down on Tyler’s bed, his back up against the headboard. Eduardo joins him there, head on Tyler’s pillow, and makes grabby hands in Tyler’s direction.

Tyler rolls his eyes, because these guys are ridiculous, but he goes, climbing over Dion and fitting himself in the narrow slot they left for him. Dion strokes his short-buzzed hair smooth and flat, and Eduardo spoons up behind him.

“You been okay?” Eduardo whispers in his ear, “These old queens treating you good?”

Tyler hums in agreement, relaxes into the warmth of his friends. “Yeah. So good it doesn’t make sense most of the time, but yeah.”

“Better than that rich young guy?”

Tyler doesn’t answer that, lets Dion pet him and tries to feel a buzz from the small portion of alcohol.

Someone laughs out in the living room. The toilet in the guest bathroom flushes.

“What the fuck did he do to you?” Dion asks, low and dangerous.

Tyler groans. “Nothing. Not really.”

“But enough that you’d leave a sweet deal like that?”

Tyler winces, wishes there’d been some way to keep his dignity and the trickle of cash to his friends at the same time.

“Who says he didn’t get bored of me and kick me out?” Tyler asks, and Eduardo scoffs.

“Didn’t seem crazy to me.”

Dion rubs at the back of Tyler’s neck, soothing the tense muscles. If they did that sort of thing, fucking other people for recreation, he’d offer a blowjob. He thinks it would be good, comfort and pleasure without too many expectations.

He sighs and relaxes again instead, drapes an arm over Dion’s waist and closes his eyes.

“I don’t even know anymore. I thought he was just fucking around. Like he thought it was friends with some awesome benefits. And I knew I was getting dumb over him. But I didn’t want to quit. Then he was fighting with his brother, and I overheard, and he made it sound like he thought he was paying for it this whole time. So I just. I freaked out. Came here. But then I sneaked back to get my shit, and there was this fucking note. Like a serious note. I believe it, but.”

“But it hurt like hell and you’re scared of getting fucked like that again,” Eduardo finishes when Tyler can’t find the words.

“Yeah.” That’s it exactly.

“If it ain’t scary, it ain’t real,” Dion says. “Just make sure you ain’t the only one shakin’.”

Jamie being scared has never been the problem. Tyler just assumed it was always because of the sex thing or the way his dick looks. He has to wonder now, if it was a Tyler thing that had him nervous.

A tap-tap comes from Tyler’s door. “Tyler?” David calls, and Tyler sits up, instinctively afraid of being caught by a parental figure in a bed with _boys_ before he realizes how little that matters now, here.

“Yeah, David?” he goes and opens the door, shows all clothes are still on, that the room isn’t full of pot smoke or something.

David smiles. Holds out a plate of Ron’s leftover mini-sandwiches. “Just letting you know all the other guests have left.” Tyler remembers enough of normal to know he’s shown really bad manners, hiding away for the last half of a party thrown for him. David doesn’t reprimand him for it. “Your friends are welcome to stay the night if they’d like to.”

He looks over his shoulder and Eduardo shrugs and nods.

“Yeah, if it’s okay.”

David nods. “Of course it’s okay. Anybody need anything? Pajamas? There are extra towels in the hall closet.”

Tyler steps in and wraps him in a hug, startling David into nearly dropping the plate. Maybe there was more rum than he thought.

“You’re welcome,” David says, like it’s all over the top and nearly annoying, but a smile is playing at his lips and he pats Tyler on the back. “No shenanigans now,” he warns.

Dion and Eduardo stare at Tyler like they’ve never seen anything like it, and color rises on Tyler’s cheeks. He flips them the bird with his back turned to David, mouths “fuck off” silently at them. Assholes. They crack up and David pats Tyler’s shoulder once more before he turns away and shuts the door.

Tyler brings the snacks back to bed and lets Dion and Eduardo divvy them up between them. They watch a show on Tyler’s tiny laptop screen, and fall asleep in a tangle on top of the blankets. For a night, the dangers of the world seem far removed from all of them. The last sleepover like this that Tyler got to host was back before his parents started fighting. He falls asleep between them, crowded but happy, ignoring the ache that he knows will come in the morning.

Dion levering himself out from under Tyler’s head wakes him up in the morning and he groans in disappointment. “Already? Maybe…I could ask…”

Eduardo kisses his temple. “This don’t look like it could take two more hungry mouths,” he murmurs, and Tyler knows it couldn’t. He can’t, won’t, ask Ron and David for things that would be hard to say no to, things they can’t really afford.

He gets up with his friends, in the thin light. There’s frost on the windows. The floors are cold. “Here,” he says, and passes Eduardo the sweater that Jamie gave him. He wishes he had something for Dion, but he’s smiling like it counts as a gift for him too, for Eduardo to be the one wearing it. He slips Dion the twenty that Mrs. Mueller next door gave him for sweeping the leaves off of her roof.

“You got my number?” he asks at the door. Eduardo nods, hikes his backpack up on his shoulder a little higher.

“Yeah. We. We’re good, Tyler. Just do us a favor and don’t fuck this up, okay?”

Tyler smirks. “I’m tryin’.” His grin softens. “If you get in a bind, call me. I’ll see what I can do.”

They nod and go. Tyler shivers in his bathrobe and shuffles back inside. The smell of coffee hits him, and he feels guilty, pouring himself a cup to sip at while he cleans up the party debris while Ron watches.

“Tyler, I wish…” Ron says, but Tyler shakes his head.

“Don’t. I know. I know you would if you could.”

===================

She’s tall, the woman waiting for Tyler after church. The January wind cuts cold and fierce, and the Dallas-native parishioners hurry to their cars, cutting a little bubble of space around her, striding upstream through the flow of people towards him.

He knows, he knows she’s there for him. Can see it in the way her eyes find him and stick with him. Fuck fuck fuck, he doesn’t know who she is or why she’s searching. He slows a step, lets Ron and David come up beside him, and in another step, he’ll let them pass so he can turn and bolt without running into them, without endangering them.

David’s hand catches his arm above the elbow, surprisingly strong.

“Together,” David says. “Whatever this is, we’ll meet it together.”

They stop walking, stand with him as the woman approaches, holds out a business card.

David reaches out and takes it, reads it and flicks it into the pocket of his coat.

“What is this about?” he snaps, all business.

“I’m Gwen Christie,” she says, direct to Tyler. “I’m a private investigator; I specialize in missing persons.”

Tyler stares wide-eyed. “Did my parents send you?” It seems so improbable, but he has missed two check-in texts since he smashed his phone. Maybe they did. Maybe they would.

“No.” She shakes her head, like she understands the flicker of hope he feels die in his chest. “I’m working for Jamie Benn.”

The name hits him like a glass of ice-water to the face, sharp and surprising. He’s been without Jamie for longer than they were together, but he still wants. To see Jamie’s smile again, not the fragile fake thing he wears in interviews. He wants nights snuggling in front of the TV, and to see how large Marshall has grown.

“What…why would Jamie hire a PI?” he asks, but he already knows.

“I was hoping you could tell me,” she says. “He _says_ he is worried about you. That he wants to know if you’re alive, healthy and happy, and if not if there’s anything he can do. I’ve heard that from clients before though, and I’m not telling him anything you don’t want me to.”

“Maybe we could continue this conversation indoors?” Ron offers, and Gwen nods. Tyler is glad for the time it takes to walk back inside, to a side-chapel more suited to silent reflection than a discussion about Tyler’s ex.

They sit, Ron and David on either side of him. Gwen talks straight to him though, like they aren’t there.

“I’m not in the business of finding people who don’t deserve to be found,” she says. “Deadbeat dads, dishonest business partners, cheating spouses, sure. Sometimes I get a call like Mr Benn’s, where the person being looked for doesn’t seem to have a reason to stay missing.”

Tyler picks at the corner of his thumbnail, frowns down at the carpet.

“I’m not…he was dumb. A thing he said. I’m not hiding from him. Not like I’m scared. I just.” He tries to reconcile what he heard that morning with the Jamie of the interviews, talking about someone who really mattered, someone who could only be Tyler.

“What does he want?” Tyler asks, because he needs to know what’s expected of him.

“He says he wants to help you if you need it. He wants me to find out if you’re in a good place or not. If you’re alive or dead.”

Tyler wrinkles his nose. That’s not any more useful than the last time she said it.

“You can tell him I’m doing good,” he says, a little insulted that Jamie would have so little faith in his survival skills. “The best I’ve been in a long time. I’m just working through some stuff right now. But. When I get a little more settled, I’ll call him. If you can give me his number, because I lost my phone.”

Gwen’s lips twitch at the corner. “I can’t give out client information without his permission. Would you like me to call and ask?”

Tyler reaches for Ron’s hand. Being a phone call away from Jamie is distressing, disorienting. He doesn’t even know why. He’s wants to go back, aches to go back— so much he’s scared of losing himself again, giving Jamie back the power to break him. But he’s scared of being rejected too, of being wrong. Scared that Jamie doesn’t actually care, that he just wanted to clean up the last of his responsibility for Tyler.

“Yeah,” Tyler says, more breath than voice. “Yeah, if it’s not a problem.”

Gwen stands up and suddenly there’s so much Tyler wants to say.

“Wait. Tell him thanks for keeping Marshall. And tell him I’m proud. Of the things he says in the interviews.”

Her smile is soft and indulgent, like she can see what Jamie sees in him, the good parts that make him worth finding.

“I’ll tell him.”

She walks out of earshot and takes out her phone.

“Are you okay?” David asks, bony hand on Tyler’s knee. “You don’t have to see this boy. You don’t ever have to call him.”

“I know.” Tyler nods, chews on his lower lip.

“Tyler,” Ron says, more firmly, “You are not his reward for the things he says to those reporters. You’re not his compensation for enduring the fights and the slurs.”

Tyler blinks because it never occurred to him that he was. Not in those words at least. “No, I know that.”  
“If you want this, we’ll support you,” David says. “If you don’t, or you’re not ready, we’ll support you in that too.”

“I’m not,” Tyler says, “Ready. But I will be, and I think…I’d like the chance to know him again. I can’t. Can’t let myself get all wrapped up again. Not like that where I didn’t have barely anything to hold onto when I was hurt. But maybe…”

The investigator comes over again, pulling paper and pen out of her back pocket. “He said to give you his number, and to tell you he doesn’t think he’s owed a call, but he’d love one if you want to make it. However long it takes.”

Tyler takes the page she hands him and passes it over to David so he doesn’t lose it.

“My number is there as well. If you want to contact Mr Benn indirectly, feel free to call me and I can pass on a message for you.”

Tyler nods, thinking how if this was actually a bad situation, how lucky he would be to have her playing the protective middle.

“Thanks. Tell him. Tell him I said thanks. Okay?” She nods and steps back.

“It was a pleasure doing business with you,” she says, and seems genuinely pleased.

She goes then, and Tyler is left to figure out what to do now.

David levers himself up from the bench, and Tyler instinctively stands to help him up.

Halfway to the door, a thought occurs to him.

“You knew,” he says to Ron. “You knew Jamie Benn was my Jamie.”

Ron shrugs. “It’s not that common a name, Tyler,” he says, and when that doesn’t seem to be enough, “You should have seen your face, watching him on the screen.”

Tyler ducks, embarrassed to have been so open, so naked, even if there’s no cost to pay because of it.

===============

“Mr Benn, is this a good time?”

It’s been twenty-eight days; Gwen is probably calling to see if Jamie wants to pay for another month of searching. He’s been debating with himself, trying to guess if this is helping Tyler or hurting. If he’s heard that there are people looking for him so he’s going to more extreme circumstances to hide, maybe even leaving the city where he seemed to have friends. Or if he’s really in trouble, if there’s a reason he won’t answer Jamie’s texts. If he _needs_ to be found.

He stands up from the table where he’s having a late breakfast with Jordie and some guys from his team, waving off Jordie’s concerned frown.

“Yeah, this is fine, just give me a sec.”

He heads back to the restrooms, to a corner that is sheltered from the dining room noise and the restaurant’s sound system.

“Okay, go ahead.”

He still hasn’t decided if he’s paying for another month, or if he’s giving up on this last hope, on Tyler.

“I found him,” Gwen says, three words and Jamie’s knees wobble. He leans his shoulder against the wall, curls in to hear her better.

“He’s…Is he okay?”

“Appears to be,” she tells him. “He’s staying with an elderly couple, looks to be in good health and good spirits.”

“Oh.”

Tyler is…Tyler is safe, alive.

Tyler is safe, alive, and hasn’t contacted him.

“He said to tell you he’s good, the best he’s been in a while. And that he’s proud of you, and thanks you for looking after…Marshall. He said he’s working on some things, but asked if he can call you when he’s ready. He’s asking for your number.”

Jamie frowns. “He already has it. Are you sure this is the right Tyler?” But he knows about Marshall, and Jamie hasn’t mentioned her in any of the interviews; it has to be the right Tyler.

“Positive. He’s changed his appearance, but the way he reacted when I approached, I have no doubts. He said he didn’t have that phone anymore.”

And if Tyler didn’t have his phone, he had no way to get Jamie’s number. Maybe he hasn’t even heard all of Jamie’s begging and apologizing and late-night drunk-dials. That may actually work in Jamie’s favor.

“Oh. Sure. Of course you can give it to him.”

“Okay. I’ll do that. I wouldn’t expect a call right away though.”

Jamie sighs. He’d love to talk to Tyler now, to hear for himself that he’s alright. He doesn’t want to push though.

“Is he pissed? That I had you look for him?”

There’s a slight pause, as if she’s considering the situation. “I’m no social worker, but I’d say he’s relieved to be found. A little disappointed that it wasn’t his parents that hired me, but he didn’t flinch that it was you.”

“Tell him he doesn’t have to call. But I would be really glad if he did. When he’s ready.”

“Anything else?”

Jamie thinks but nothing comes to mind. He’s said everything he can say. _I miss you_ comes to mind, and _Please please come home._ Neither are fair.

“Just. If he needs something, and he doesn’t want to call me, can he call you? I’ll pay for your time. Whatever it takes. Whatever he needs.”

“Got it,” she says.

He wants to keep her on the line. Wants to ask what Tyler changed, where he is, what he’s wearing.

“Thank you. Keep me informed.”

He hangs up when she assures him she will, and goes back to the table, feeling like someone just hit him in the head with an ax handle.

“Everything okay?” Jordie asks, and Jamie lets out a deep breath. Doesn’t want to get into his big gay drama in front of Jordie’s teammates.

“Yeah. It’s. Good.”

They go back to eating and Jamie shovels the food into his mouth and down his throat without tasting anything. His phone chirps a little while later, a short text from Gwen.

_Tyler says thanks_

Thanks, Jamie thinks, wondering what the hell he’s done that deserves gratitude.

=============

“I’m not good with needles,” Tyler says, one hand tight on the chair’s arm, the other resting on the padded work surface.

Ian laughs, pauses with the needle inches above Tyler’s bicep. “You know this is nothing but needles, for the next couple hours, right?”

Ashleigh snickers and he flips her off. Just because she’s paying for this doesn’t mean she can laugh at him.

He knows tattoo means needles, and he’s seriously not looking forward to the process. Some guys are into that kind of thing, but pain has never done it for him.

But he wants the ink, wants the sketch on his arm to rest under his skin, the tree’s branches reaching up and the roots sinking down, his heart bound secure to the trunk. He wants to mark the occasion, a birth date passed that feels like an event for the first time since he left home. A test that somehow, miraculously, came back clean. He wants to celebrate paperwork filed and a name that’s soon to change.

He thinks of Jamie’s number, programmed into Tyler’s new phone. He has checked the Stars schedule, and tomorrow looks good for a call. He’s ready, and he wants to do it. He doesn’t need Jamie in his life, but he’d like to have him there. He’s not sure what they’ll be to each other now, if they can be whatever they were before, or just friends, or what even Jamie is hoping for. They’ll have to figure that out together.

He wants his roots to show, the things that anchor him. He wants his branches to taste sunlight, to remind him that there is a future, with or without Jamie, and it can be good.

“C’mon, Tyler,” Ashleigh says, “I wanna see if I like his work before I get mine.”

Once Ian starts, there’s no going back. Tyler won’t leave it half-done. “Fuck, okay, go.”

The needle burns, more than jabs, a buzzing scrape that goes on and on. It’s easier than getting blood drawn though, doesn’t ache in the same hollow way. He drifts, not quite dozing off, just loses himself in the sensation of it all. Accepts it like the winter cold or deep hollowing hunger, something that he can’t fight against, only take it and wait it out. It's more than that; it's hurt that _means something_ for the first time, pain he's choosing to endure to get something he really wants.

He looks at the work, before Ian wraps it up, raw and flecked with blood and ink. He thinks that it was worth every minute of the pain.

=====================

The text comes on the fifth of March, late in the morning, while Jamie’s on the treadmill at the apartment’s gym.

 _This is Tyler,_ it reads, _Is this a good time for me to call?_

 _Yes_ Jamie says, nearly falling off of the belt in his hurry to get the word out.

_At the gum. Give me five._

_Gym. Heading up. Don’t wat to lose you in the elevator._

_Want._

_Sorry._

Jamie tries to console himself with the fact that Tyler already knows that the stupid little buttons were never designed for thumbs as big as Jamie’s.

He practically runs for home, remembers his towel hanging on the bar of the bench press when he’s already halfway up and writes it off as an acceptable loss.

He’s just wrangling Marshall to keep her inside while he gets himself through the door when the phone rings, the same number the text just came from, and Jamie is out of breath when he answers.

“H’lo?”

And then Tyler’s voice is there, “Hi. It’s Tyler.”

“Hi,” Jamie says back, sliding down to sit on the floor. Marshall pokes her nose in, ears pricked, trying to find where he’s hiding Tyler.

“Hey,” Tyler says and Jamie says it back. There should be more, important words, but he just can’t get over it, that Tyler actually called, that he’s listening to Tyler’s voice.

Tyler laughs then, soft. “Shit. I knew I should have written down what I wanted to say.”

“Hey,” Jamie says again, low and gentle. He doesn’t want Tyler to be stressed out calling him. Doesn’t want Tyler to get frustrated and hang up. “Tell me how you’ve been.”

Tyler’s voice softens then, “I’ve been good, Jamie. Real good. Better than…a long time. I’m staying with these guys, and they’re helping me out. I’ve got a lot of stuff to straighten out. I’m getting my immigration shit taken care of. Working on a GED. Jesus, I’m not that kind of smart. Was it hard for you? School and hockey at the same time?”

“Kind of?” Jamie says. “There were a lot of late nights, studying on a bus, that kind of thing. But hey. Give yourself some slack too, okay? You took a couple years off, and you’ve got years to make up. That doesn’t happen overnight.”

Tyler snorts. “You sound like David.”

It takes Jamie’s breath, to hear another man’s name on Tyler’s lips. He powers through it though, “That David sounds like a smart guy.”

“I found another dog,” Tyler says without segue, “Or he found me. Something was tipping over the trash cans so I had to wait until just before the truck came to take the bags down, and here I was at six AM, in the dark, freezing my nuts off, and this shadow so big I thought it was a cow is suddenly just there. Scared the shit out of me. I thought he was gonna eat me, but he was more scared than I was. Backed himself into a corner and just stood there shaking and growling. I came back the next morning with a pack of bologna and teased him in. Took me a week to get him in the house.”

Jamie scratches behind Marshall’s ears, wonders if this is his cue to be offended on her behalf. Wonders what Tyler wants from him at all.

“I named him Cash,” Tyler says, winding down. “After Jonny Cash. David is really into that kind of thing. But he’s more Ron’s dog now. Ron can’t get up from his chair without that dog under his feet. Well. Beside his hip. He’s huge.”

Gwen had said, that Tyler was staying with some older men. Jamie knows it’s none of his business, nothing he can control. Tyler seems content though, not like he’s whoring himself out for a roof over his head. Jamie wants to ask, to make damn fucking sure, but he bites his lip on the question.

“Hey, so,” Tyler says to fill the quiet that goes on too long. “Out of the closet in the NHL. Holy shit Jamie, what were you thinking?”

Jamie huffs a laugh, shakes his head even though Tyler isn’t there to see it. Marshall curls up in his lap, ears pricked at the phone, still listening to her daddy’s voice.

“Little bit of a miscalculation,” Jamie says, and Tyler laughs with him for a bit.

“But things are getting better?” Tyler asks, and Jamie imagines he hears genuine worry in his voice.

“Yeah,” Jamie says, because they are.

“It’s been over eight games since you had a fight, I saw. That’s a record for you this season, yeah?”

Jamie chuckles. “Yeah.”

“So how’d that happen. The officials finally doing their jobs?”

Jamie feels a little swell of pride.

“I uh. So I was on the ice, and this guy on the other team was all ‘Hey faggot. Hey cock-sucker. Hey queer,’ trying to get me worked up enough to drop the gloves. And I just. It was ridiculous. I just looked at him like ‘So?’ and he got more graphic, and I was like ‘Yeah? So?’ and somewhere along the line he realized how dumb it was to call me things that I admit I am.”

“That’s…shit.”

Jamie shrugs. “It’s just words. They’ve mostly stopped.”

“I saw your interview,” Tyler says, jumping topics. Jamie blushes, ducks his head.

“Oh god, that was horrible.”

“Your hair’s horrible,” Tyler counters, like that makes sense at all. “Don’t be a dumbass. That took balls of steel.”

“I tried,” Jamie says. “To talk about the things that matter.”

“That was good,” Tyler says, and they sit in silence for another comfortable stretch of time.

“How’s my girl?” Tyler asks at last, and Jamie chuckles.

“She’s fine. Sitting in my lap, being a pain in my ass. The dog-sitters have spoiled her. She’s on the furniture all the time now, getting hair everywhere.”

The mirth he intends must make it through because Tyler laughs. “The _dog-sitters,_ yeah.”

They talk, and Jamie lets himself float on the comfort he finds in Tyler’s voice. Lets himself finally believe that Tyler really is fine. He’s whole and happy and wants to call Jamie anyway.

“Hey,” Tyler says at last, “I know you’ve probably got practice tomorrow. Would it be okay if I came up to watch? Meet you for lunch after?”

“Yes!” Jamie can’t find it in himself to be embarrassed by how fast and enthusiastic his response is. “Yeah. I mean sure. It’ll take a while to change after, and I was gonna do the meet and greet line after, but yeah. Of course. Anytime.”

“Okay.” Jamie hears the smile in Tyler’s voice, the warm welcome. “Okay. I’ll come up then. There’s an On The Border right around the corner. I’ll meet you there whenever you’re done?”

“Yeah,” Jamie breathes. This is so much more than he hoped for. “Yeah, it’s a…plan.”

“Okay,” Tyler says again, and Jamie says okay and they sit there listening to each other breathe until Tyler finally laughs.

“Tomorrow,” he says, and hangs up.

“Tomorrow,” Jamie tells Marshall. Holy shit. Tyler. Tomorrow.

===============

Jamie watches the stands as much as he can while on the ice for practice, looking for Tyler, for the slouch of his shoulder, for the flash of pink Mohawk. He looks, but doesn’t see him, and he’s got a damn job to do here, so he turns his attention to the ice, follows the coach’s instructions, fits himself into the swirl and flow of shooting drills and passing drills and power play drills.

He lingers, when the rest of the team has already trickled into the room to shower and change, but Tyler doesn’t come to the glass, doesn’t seem to be there at all.

He wants to text, after he’s clean and in fresh clothes. Wants to ask if Tyler made it, if they’re still on for lunch, but he wants to put the disappointment off for as long as he can. Maybe Tyler missed the practice but will be at the restaurant.

He goes out the public door, Sharpie in hand. Some of the fans step away from the rope when he comes by, following Robidas, like they don’t want Jamie’s gay cooties or autograph on their stuff. Jamie has just run out of energy to waste being offended by those. Fuck them. He pretends he doesn’t see. If they don’t want him, he doesn’t want them either.

“Mr Benn.” The voice is soft, the pre-teen squeezing his way between two older kids to hold out his magazine for Jamie to sign. It’s the Advocate issue with Jamie inside, the interview where he talks about young people getting bullied and worse, how things need to change to help the kids coming up through the system.

Jamie takes the magazine. “Who should I sign it to?” he asks, and the kid shuffles his feet, looks down but he’s smiling.

“Danny. Uh. Dan. I like how you play.”

Jamie nods and signs, _Dan, Thanks for being a Fan, Jamie Benn,_ under the photo of himself, puts a quick star under it.

“You play?” Jamie asks, and Danny shakes his head.

“Nah. Soccer. But I just thought you were awesome to do what you did, and I started watching the Stars for you. Hockey is pretty cool.”

Even with Jamie being as out as a person can be, the kid dances around the words, doesn’t say it outright. But that’s okay. Jamie doesn’t ask if Danny is gay, just gives him some time while the rest of the team goes past him.

“Thanks for coming today,” Jamie finally says and moves on. There is one like this for every five that mutter ‘faggot’ or step between Jamie and their sons or hide their jerseys from his autograph. He doesn’t know what he’d do if they weren’t there, boys and sometimes girls, telling him he made a difference in their lives.

He doesn’t rush, never rushes this part. Signs everything that’s offered to him. Looks behind the front row to make sure there’s no shy ones lingering back. When he’s done, when he’s got them all, he finally goes through the garage door, out to his truck.

 _On my way,_ he texts to Tyler, and doesn’t wait for a reply before he starts the engine and the air conditioner and heads for the road. It had been cool in the morning, but as the afternoon sun peeks through it’s warming up. Texas weather is not to be trusted.

 _Here. Got a table,_ Tyler has texted back and Jamie breathes out a sigh of relief. He heads in, tells the hostess he’s meeting someone and looks over her to glance around for Tyler, looking for the bright splash of his hair.

A man stands up from a booth, faces the door and waves, and that…it’s Tyler, his hair short all over and dark.

“I see him,” Jamie mumbles and goes over, drifting through like he’s dazed. It’s only been a couple months. Tyler shouldn’t be so changed. He’s put on weight, good weight, lean strong muscle. Maybe a tiny bit of height too. His proportions are a man’s now, his neck no longer so slender, his shoulders broader. He’s wearing a dark t-shirt, a splash of white bandage peeking out from under the left sleeve.

He’s beautiful, but it’s more than that. The sight of him is just so damn _welcome_ that Jamie’s chest aches.

Tyler stares up at Jamie, like Jamie isn’t the only one who’s been aching for this, for the two of them in the same room.

“Hey,” Tyler murmurs, and Jamie slides into the booth across from him.

“You cut your hair,” Jamie says, dumb with the sight of him.

“Yeah,” Tyler says, ducks his head a little and then raises his chin almost defiantly.

“It looks good,” Jamie says, hoping he’s allowed to.

“Thanks,” Tyler says, and Jamie flips the menu open just to have something to do.

“I.” Jamie licks his lower lip, uncertain for a moment, but it has to be said. “I know I said it in the text, and the note. And your voice mail. But.” He raises his gaze to meet Tyler’s. “I need to tell you that I’m sorry. I didn’t think you were that. What I said. And I shouldn’t have said it. And I’m sorry I did.”

Tyler nods, lets Jamie say the words. He looks down at his hands resting on the table, gathers his thoughts before he speaks. “That really fucking hurt,” he says, eyes down. Jamie aches with regret, with shame. “It hurt and I didn’t have anything to cushion the blow, y’know? I didn’t. I couldn’t even say to myself ‘no see, I’ve got a job’ or anything. Of course I believed you thought that, because if I wasn’t, what the hell else was I?”

Jamie shakes his head, denying but not interrupting.

“I had to go,” Tyler says like it’s him that’s apologizing. Jamie breathes through it, afraid that the next words are going to be _I have to stay gone._ “I had to figure out some things. I had to be more than your boy.”

“Did you?” Jamie dares to ask. “Figure things out?”

The waitress drifts by but apparently can recognize an unready table and diverts her path away from them.

Tyler shrugs. “Some. Enough. I’ve got family now. Ron and David. I go to church twice a week and people know me there. I’m not getting deported, but I can’t work legally yet, so I’m doing some volunteer stuff and a couple under-the-table handyman jobs for friends.”

It doesn’t seem a whole lot different than what Tyler had going on before, but Jamie figures it’s not his impressions of the situation that matter.

“You happy?” Jamie asks, and Tyler smiles, soft and easy. Not pushing for a reaction, not trying to get Jamie horny or off-balance or flustered like he used to. This is where the change has happened, Jamie thinks; it’s in the quiet confidence, how settled Tyler is in himself.

“Yeah,” Tyler says, and waves the waitress over. They order their drinks and a plate of avocado fries to split, just like they used to.

Jamie takes a minute to swallow that, that Tyler is happy without him. He’s glad, because he loves Tyler, wants the best for him, but…

“Jamie,” Tyler says, gentle. “I’m happy, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think about you. That I didn’t miss you.”

Jamie takes a deep breath and nods and he’ll be okay, he will.

Tyler reaches a hand out, nudges his knuckles against Jamie’s.

“You remember Philip and Tom?” Jamie asks, desperate for something to talk about, some change in the conversation. “That came over for dinner and video games that time?”

Tyler smiles. “Yeah. I remember them.”

“They asked if it was you I had been with. They had a bet running. I told them. I hope…”

Tyler shrugs. “Not a big deal. I’m not the one that was in the closet.” He winces then, and Jamie doesn’t know what could be wrong. “I want you to know I didn’t tell anybody. About you, or me and you. I mean you came out on your own, but Dion and Eduardo met you before I even knew who you were, and Ron and David guessed, I think. From me watching the interviews.”

Jamie groans. “Those were horrible. Why would you do that to yourself?”

Tyler tips his head. “It was the closest I could be to you right then.”

And if they’re doing full disclosure, Jamie has a confession of his own.

“Jordie found your stash. Under the sink.”

Tyler frowns at the name, and Jamie isn’t sure if he should have brought it up.

“You still got your key?”

Tyler reaches for his pocket and Jamie holds up his hand. “No, I don’t want it back. Just. I made Jordie put it back where he found it. It’s there. For you or your friends if anybody ever needs it. My apartment is there, if you ever need it.”

“You are so weird,” Tyler complains, and Jamie can’t argue with that.

It’s easier then, to make small talk, to tell Tyler about how the season is going, how well some of the Stars are taking having a gay teammate, and the often hilarious ways the others are failing. He says how hard it is, to lose and lose and lose, only winning one in four games, one in three if they’re lucky.

“You looked good today at practice,” Tyler says, talks about a nice pass Jamie made, about his goal in the shootout drill. Jamie feels less frustrated with himself and more at his team by the time Tyler’s done, but it helps.

Tyler tells him about jogging with Cash on the days that are warm enough, how he thinks nobody would say anything even if he still had the pink hair, with a dog like that beside him. He complains about helping a friend move into a dorm room, and the endless pile of Ikea furniture he’d put together. Tyler pouts and shows his thumb, and Jamie doesn’t see the blister he claims to have, but gives him mock-sympathy anyway.

Tyler tells him that he had a birthday, with guests and cake and icecream, presents and everything like it’s hard to believe. Jamie wishes he could have been there, could have seen Tyler like that, the center of attention, of warm family life.

“Me and Dion and Eduardo ended up hiding in my room for half the night,” he says with a rueful shrug. “It was kind of a lot, after a while.”

“How’ve they been?” Jamie asks, “I saw them, early December maybe. Tried to help out a bit.”

Tyler shrugs. “They’re still around. They had to ‘break up’ to get some help from the Salvation Army to make it through last month, but they’re out of that program now, back together and making it work most of the time. They don’t have a phone, so.”

Jamie nods. He’s seen the pre-paid phones in the convenience store, and they’re only like a hundred bucks. He thinks he could buy one and keep it in his car in case he sees them again. It feels like it would make their lives and Tyler’s easier.

They talk and get caught up and it’s painfully awkward at times, but if Tyler’s willing to suffer through it to talk to Jamie, then Jamie sure as hell can survive it too.

They order and eat, and Jamie pokes at his rice for a long time after everything else is gone, trying to draw it out. “You want to come back by the apartment, visit with Marshall?” he offers, and Tyler looks regretful as he shakes his head.

“I can’t today. David’s at the bookstore around the corner, and I’m driving him to his doctor’s appointment up here at two.”

Jamie nods, pushes his plate away.

“Maybe next week?” Tyler says, and he sounds hopeful, like there’s any way he could screw this up so bad Jamie wouldn’t want him.

Jamie doesn’t know what his schedule looks like—he remembers saying yes to an interview but can’t remember when it is. “Can I text you?” he asks, “When I know when I’m free?”

Tyler nods and puts a twenty on top of the bill before Jamie can take it, paying his half and then some. Jamie puts his money on top and it’s a hell of a tip but he can’t be bothered waiting for change. Tyler stands up and Jamie gets to his feet too. He wants to…something. He’s not sure, and then Tyler’s arms are open and he’s close and Jamie wraps him in a hug, a little tight, a little long. Breathes in the smell of Tyler’s hair, some shampoo Jamie doesn’t know, one that isn’t in Jamie’s shower. Tyler holds him back, strong arms wrapped over Jamie’s.

“Text me anytime,” Tyler says, “It doesn’t have to be about when I should come over.”

Jamie squeezes him one last time and then steps back. “I will.”

Tyler slips from his arms and leaves and Jamie smiles, his heart full of maybe, full of possibility, full of hope.

 

=====================

 _Wednesday at 3?_ the text from Jamie reads, and Tyler stares at it for a long time before he can figure out what to say. On the one hand, yes. He’s definitely free then, and he knows Jamie will only have a few hours at most, before the game that night, so it’s a very set length of time which is good. On the other hand, he can’t get it out of his head, how great it felt to have Jamie’s arms around him, his strength and warmth and he just. He’s scared if they’re alone in Jamie’s apartment together that he’ll go too far, too fast, and fuck everything up. He’s never had to play a long game, never had to pass on good stuff today for the sake of making it last, for getting a whole lot of good down the road.

He checks the weather and rereads Jamie’s text. _Meet you in the park?_ he asks, knowing that Jamie will know which one. He gets a smiley face back, and feels a wave of relief. They’ll figure this out. Somehow. Together.

==========

He debates for a while, but ends up bringing Cash with him, the big moose. He smears the back windows of the car with drool and keeps bonking the side glass when he tries to put his head through it. Tyler’s trying to get him used to riding though, because if they only put him in the car to go to the vet, he’ll stop cooperating, and if he stops cooperating it will be a pain in the ass to get a dog that big in the car. He’s kind of bony still, but getting heavier and stronger by the day.

Jamie is already there on a bench when Tyler parks and gets Cash out, throwing a ball for Marshall. “Easy,” Tyler warns Cash, bumping his shoulder to get his attention. “Shh shh shh, easy.” He’s not sure Cash is ready to go off-leash, and he really doesn’t want him learning he can yank the cord out of Tyler’s hand whenever he feels like it.

Jamie stands up to watch them approach, eyes wide. “You said he was a big dog, but holy shit.”

Tyler laughs, and Cash sits when he stops moving. “Good boy, good good boy,” he says, and scritches behind Cash’s ears.

“I’m thinking about getting some inline skates, letting him pull me around the neighborhood,” Tyler says, and then Marshall is there, tail tucked up under her body slinking up, scared of a bigger dog but she’s just gotta get close to Tyler, has to sniff him.

Tyler’s eyes prickle and he passes Cash’s leash to Jamie as he goes down to his knees. “Oh baby. Oh look at you, you’re all grown up.” And she is, mostly. She doesn’t look like a puppy anymore—she’s still filling out, but she’s got the height to match her paws now, damp nose nudging in under his chin and her tail thwapping a mile a minute as he pets her, clings to her fur. He takes the face-washing she gives him with a grimace, and finally stands up, joins Jamie on the park bench.

“I was scared she’d forgotten me,” he admits.

Jamie snorts. “You’re not very forgettable.”

Tyler smiles and ducks his head, and Cash chooses that moment to remind them that he’s there, putting both big front paws on Jamie’s knee and leaning in to sniff his face.

It’s a good afternoon, just the two of them and the dogs. Cash gets along with Marshall, sniffing her as she rolls on her back but not bullying her.

Jamie’s shoulder brushes against Tyler’s, a spot of warmth in an afternoon that’s just on the brisk side of comfortable.

“If you ever decide you want Marshall back…” Jamie starts once, but his voice isn’t right; he sounds like it would gut him to lose her and Tyler won’t do that to him.

“Nah. I’ve got all the dog I can handle right now.”

Jamie nods and they spend the hour sitting and talking, watching Marshall fetch and Cash slobber for his chance at the ball.

It’s good. Spending time with Jamie, it’s really good.

=========  
_Rona nd David want to meet u_

Jamie can’t think of any summons more ominous.

 _why?_ he texts back, but this is one of those conversations he wants to hear Tyler’s voice for so he calls.

“Why?” he asks when Tyler answers.

“Because they think it’s nineteen ten and they need to ‘vet my gentleman caller’ or some shit.” Jamie can hear the fond exasperation in his voice. Tyler has been complaining about his reading assignments lately, and Jamie is tickled to hear it’s crept into his day-to-day language.

“Am I?” Jamie asks, and he can’t resist the chance to tease, even as his heart is pounding at the thought of it, that they’re dating, that Tyler wants them to be dating. “Your gentleman caller? Does this mean you’ll allow me to court you?”

Tyler growls. “Tuesday night at five, yes or no?”

“What, no written invitation? I suppose I could attend.”

Tyler huffs, but like he’s putting a lot of effort into not being amused. “Tuesday at five. Bring a pie. Not from a grocery store unless it’s Central Market. Go to that bakery on the corner or something. I mean it.”

Jamie would laugh, except that Tyler does seem pretty damn serious. “Yeah. I can do that. Anything else?”

“No, just. If they get too out of hand with the interrogation, I might have to slip you out the back door, so keep your keys on you at all times.”

Jamie smiles, cradles the phone between shoulder and ear. “Hey. The only one I need to impress is you, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then I can take whatever they can dish out. It’s okay. It’s…I’m glad there’s somebody out there looking out for you.”

“Remember you said that,” Tyler tells him.

 

==============

The address Tyler sent him to is a solid one-story ranch style house, and Jamie parks on the curb and walks up to the door. He rings the bell, and isn’t sure he has the right place until he hears Cash’s deep woof from inside.

The man who opens the door is tall, and standing a step above Jamie makes him even taller. Thin and elderly, his white hair swept back and gelled down. He’s wearing a crisp white shirt and dark slacks, and Jamie is glad he didn’t dress down for this.

“You must be Jamie,” the man says, eyes bright. He offers his hand and Jamie is glad he didn’t talk Jordie into buying a bottle of wine, so he only has the box of pie to juggle to take it. Cash sniffs at it like Jamie brought it for him, and Jamie holds it up higher, out of reach of curious noses.

Music plays from inside, slow soft jazz, and Jamie feels like he’s fallen through a time warp, into decor and manners forty years out of date.

“I’m Ron. It’s nice to finally meet you.” His smile is warm, but his eyes are bright and alert, and Jamie doesn’t expect much to get past him. He wonders how much these men know, what exactly Tyler has told them.

“Thanks,” Jamie says, dipping his head and stepping in when Ron moves back to welcome him. There’s another man in the living room, and Ron introduces him as David.

And then Tyler steps in, a hand towel thrown over the shoulder of his powder-blue henley. He fusses Cash into a different room and shuts the door and then turns his attention back to Jamie, his smile open and sweet and just a little bit uncertain.

“Hey,” Jamie says, and Tyler nods through the door he had come in from.

“You can put the pie in here.”

Jamie steps through and puts the pie on the counter. The kitchen smells amazing, and Jamie feels a twinge for all the days he came home with take-out or cooked his own pathetic eggs.

“What’s for dinner?” he asks.

“Herb roasted chicken and this recipe I found that has wild rice and grapes in it.”

“It smells amazing,” Jamie says, reaches to touch Tyler’s elbow, just a brush of his thumb through the shirt. “You okay?”

Tyler chuckles and shakes his head. “Yeah. I just haven’t done much entertaining before, and this feels like a big deal.”

Jamie nudges Tyler’s shoulder, turns him so they’re facing each other, carefully wraps him up in his arms and holds him. Tyler stands stiff and resistant for a breath, and then sighs and leans into the hug.

“Can I help set the table or anything?”

Tyler snorts. “It’s been set since noon.”

Jamie slides his hand up, cups the back of Tyler’s neck, just feeling the solid warmth of him.

“Here, fill the glasses with ice and take them out. Dining room is that way.”

“Sure,” Jamie says, and does as he’s asked. It’s easier then, letting Ron tell him where to sit and wait while Tyler brings out the dishes. Everything looks and smells amazing, and Jamie almost digs in but Tyler catches his eye and gives him a minute shake of his head and Jamie waits.

The other three bow their heads so Jamie does too. David murmurs out a “For this meal we are about to receive” but before he wraps it up he goes off script, “We are so grateful to have Tyler here with us, and to have this chance to meet Jamie and get to know him.”

Jamie looks up after the Amen and Tyler’s rolling his eyes. He makes a good show of teenage impatience with everything parental, but there’s a teasing edge to it, like it’s a role he’s pretending to play, like he eats up every bit of chiding and complimenting and guidance these two offer.

The food tastes as wonderful as it smells, and Jamie isn’t shy with his compliments.

“Ron helped me test out recipes,” Tyler says, and Ron tsks at him and waves off the comment.

“So Jamie,” David says when the food is half-gone. “What’s the average career of a professional hockey player look like?”

Jamie blots his lips with the cloth napkin. “I uh, like my career?” he asks, just to be sure what David’s asking. David gives him a ‘go ahead’ nod.

“Ideally, I get lots of points and stay healthy and keep playing until I’m thirty-five,” Jamie says. “But I know it doesn’t work out like that for everybody, so I try to be smart with my money, mostly.” Exorbitant payouts to private investigators notwithstanding. “If I don’t produce at the NHL level, I’ll get sent down to the AHL, but that’s still a good paycheck. Enough to save for college and support…whatever I need to be supporting while I play. If I can make it through even my three-year rookie contract without getting sent down or injured, I should have a good nest-egg.”

David nods like he’s satisfied. “It sounds like you’ve thought about it,” he says like it’s a compliment.

Jamie shrugs. “I wasn’t drafted high. I love hockey and I want to play for as long as I’m good at it, but it always felt like a long-shot.”

“Seems sensible,” Ron agrees, and they go back to eating again.

“What’re your plans for summer?” David asks, and Jamie puts his fork down again.

“I’m not sure…” he starts. It’s not looking likely that the Stars will make the playoffs. It’s coming down to an increasingly improbable number of wins for them and losses for a large number of teams for them to claw their way to the wildcard slot. “They asked if I’d be interested in playing with the Texas Stars for the playoffs, but I haven’t heard for sure yet. I want to spend a few weeks at home, at least. Other than that, I guess it would depend on if any plans come up…”

He can’t hold himself from looking over at Tyler, seeing what he thinks of that. Tyler’s eyes are down, and Jamie isn’t sure if he doesn’t want Jamie to leave, or doesn’t want him to stay.

“Family is important…” David says, and Jamie takes the chance to stuff a bite in his mouth. “How’re your parents taking your coming out? Are they supporting you?”

It’s one of the most open acknowledgments of what Jamie has done, and it sounds kind of strange, the words actually being spoken.

“Yeah, they. They’re worried about me, being in Texas, and so far from home. My sister keeps threatening to fly down and walk me to the arena, and my brother has been coming in from Allen as often as he can.”

Tyler’s lips press together, but Jamie doesn’t want to take back the mention of Jordie. Despite his fuck up, he’s still Jamie’s brother, still on his side.

“So, what kind of pie did you bring?” Ron asks, and Jamie jumps on the distraction.

“Uh, apple? It looked fancy. The top is a spiral of sliced apples.”

Tyler tries to smother a grin, and Jamie resists poking his tongue out at him. Yes, he took Tyler’s advice, yes, he went to that bakery, yes, Tyler is always right.

“Let’s see if it tastes as good as it looks,” Ron suggests, and Tyler goes to the kitchen for a knife and server and a stack of dessert plates.

They eat the pie and Jamie thinks he’s got out easy, until Ron and Tyler stand and start clearing the table and David says, “Come back to my office, Jamie, let’s have a sherry.”

“I’m not twenty-one yet,” Jamie tries, but David looks completely unimpressed.

“I’m sure we can bend the rules just this once.”

“David,” Tyler says, warning and pleading at once.

“I’m not going to traumatize the boy,” David soothes him (Jamie is not reassured). “We just need to have a discussion.”

Jamie pushes his chair back and stands up. Gives Tyler a shrug and a smile and a ‘how bad can it be?’ twitch of his eyebrows.

Tyler’s grimace says that it’s Jamie’s funeral, but he goes anyway, down a narrow hall to a small and manly room, packed with a desk and leather chairs, piles of papers and a wall of filing cabinets, concept drawings of now-classic Dallas skyscrapers framed on the walls.

“Have a seat,” David says, and flusters around with some paperwork, clearing a spot for a bottle and two glasses that he pulls out of the desk. “I didn’t invite you back here to berate you.”

Jamie sits, and takes the glass when it’s handed to him. He tries a cautious sip of the dark liquid that David pours inside. He’s never had sherry before. It’s a little thick, a little sweet for his taste, but he doesn’t complain.

“Tyler is very taken with you,” David comments, leaning his cane against the desk and lowering himself into a chair.

It sparks in Jamie’s chest, to hear someone else say it. He hadn’t been sure, what the hell they were doing since that day Tyler called him again, the time spent in the park or meeting for coffee or lunch. It’s been a strange dance that Jamie is content to let Tyler lead, but it feels good to hear that there’s something behind it, some chance for the future.

“Ron was very taken with me, when we first met,” David says, sitting back and sipping his drink. “He was Tyler’s age, and I was…older. Older than you are now, at least. He was working the counter at this diner where I ate breakfast every morning.” His expression goes soft and a little sad, remembering.

“Things were so different back then, and yet he made it easy to make the first move, to ask him out. I took him to this little cinema that I’d never been to, on the far side of town. Someplace nobody who knew me would see me out with this boy. He was living in this shoebox of an apartment, tiny and dirty, and of course I did away with that right away, put him up in a posh high rise flat. I came by when I could. I had a very demanding job, with a lot of entertaining and socializing. Clients to wine and dine, a different woman on my arm every night.”

David shakes his head. “I thought he was happy. He didn’t have to work, didn’t have to worry about money. He just had to be there when I wanted him. It didn’t seem like much to ask at the time.”

The drink is sitting hard in Jamie’s stomach, and the story sounds so familiar, how glad he was to have Tyler there whenever Jamie wanted him, making his house a home.

“I almost lost him,” David says, “He was so isolated, and lonely, and bored. There were so many pills and so much booze back in those days, doctors who would prescribe anything you wanted. When he left the hospital, he said he was leaving me. That being with me was killing him.”

Jamie wonders if it had been that bad for Tyler, if it would have been eventually.

“By all rights he should have left,” David sighs. “I did not deserve the risk he took by staying. I did everything in my power to make him happy, but…it wasn’t easy. He got his own apartment again, took a job that meant I barely saw him. Got evicted and moved into my spare bedroom. A lot of it was worsened by my staying in the closet, but it took years, for me to accept him as my partner, my strength. Can you imagine how diminished my life would have been without him in it?”

Jamie shakes his head; he doesn’t know them, but he knows how much duller his own world has been, these long months alone.

“You’re thinking about your Tyler,” David says. “Good. Your situation is so different than ours was, but there are still dangers, still so many ways for people who love each other to hurt each other.”

“I know. I know, and I want…I want him to be happy,” Jamie says.

David nods like they’ve reached an accord.

“Never underestimate him; he’s a strong young man and he’ll be better off without you than you will be without him. Make it as easy as possible for him to forget the gap in your income. Give him more than just room, give him _encouragement_ to do the things that make him happy and connected and engaged with the world. Sometimes these things will take away from the time he has with you, but you’ll both be healthier for it in the long run.”

Jamie swallows and nods. Takes the words to heart.

===================

============

Jamie feels shell-shocked coming out of David’s office, like he spent well more than the half hour or so he’d actually been there.

Tyler is in the kitchen when Jamie finds him, second servings of pie and glasses of milk for the two of them in the small breakfast nook.

“Oh god, he didn’t give you a sex talk, did he?” Tyler asks, eyes wide but his lips twitching as he tries to contain his mirth and Jamie feels some of the weight lift from his shoulders.

“Nah,” Jamie says, shakes his head. He can hear the jingle of the dog’s collar in the living room, the television’s audio a low background sound to replace the jazz. It reminds him of his grandparent’s house, a soft, safe place.

They sit and eat their pie, Tyler’s bony ankle against Jamie’s under the table.

“Want to walk Cash with me?” Tyler asks when they’re done.

Jamie nods. “I’ll rinse the dishes if you want to get his leash.”

It’s cool out, Dallas in March liable to turn from t-shirt weather to near-freezing on a whim of nature. Not so cold that Jamie wishes for a jacket, but enough that he’s glad of his long sleeves. His knuckles brush against Tyler’s as they walk, and Tyler slips his palm against Jamie’s and holds on.

“You okay?” Tyler asks as they walk, and Jamie realizes he’s been quiet, mulling it over.

“Lot to think about,” he says.

“Ron tells me I have to figure out how to balance my pride and my safety.”

Jamie glances at him but can’t read his face in the dim light of the wide-spaced street lamps.

“Safety?” he asks, because he’s not sure where that comes in.

“My…I don’t know. My not feeling like I couldn’t leave again if I needed to. And having a backup plan if this doesn’t all work out.”

Jamie presses his lips together, squeezes Tyler’s hand and hopes he’s conveying his support, his hope that it does work out, his commitment to making that happen no matter how much work it takes.

“They…” Tyler’s voice is rough, and Jamie kind of wants to hug him, but he doesn’t stop walking so Jamie doesn’t. “Ron says there’ll be a little left over for me. In. In their wills. But I don’t want…”

“Hey,” Jamie says, soft. “Old people talk about that kind of thing. It doesn’t mean it’s coming right away, unless…”

Tyler shakes his head. Cash sniffs at a tree and Tyler slows down to let him water it.

“Neither of them is sick or anything. Just. It freaks me out when they talk about it. They’re old, Jamie. It scares me.”

Jamie slides one arm around his shoulders, a half-hug that seems less pushy than a full one would have been, and he’s rewarded by Tyler leaning in against him. He wants to ask how long Tyler’s known these guys, why they’d be talking about leaving their inheritance to Tyler, but it doesn’t seem like something he can butt his nose into— not yet at least.

“I want to be with you,” Tyler says, simple, clear. Just the slightest emphasis on the word ‘want’. It’s scary, because want is so much more tenuous than need. Want can change its mind; want can move on to something more interesting. Need though, is nothing to do with love, and Jamie will take want over need, every time.

“I want that too,” Jamie says, being so careful to use enough words, the right words.

Tyler’s shoulder bumps his and they loop around the block and head back to the front porch light.

Jamie kisses him there, leaning in slow so Tyler can give him a sign if it isn’t okay. A soft brush of lips. Tyler opens for it soft and sweet for just a moment before his hand goes up to the back of Jamie’s neck, holds him there as he presses in, firm and sure. There is a quiet confidence to Tyler now, and the kiss isn’t a challenge, isn’t a dare. It’s Tyler enjoying Jamie and Jamie enjoying Tyler.

Cash whines and nudges in between them and Tyler’s smile is wry when they pull apart.

“I should go in,” he says, and Jamie gets it, that they’re going slow, taking things so very carefully.

“Okay. I’ll text you?”

Tyler nods. “Yeah. Anytime.”

He leans in over the dog and gives Jamie one more quick kiss before turning and going into the house.

“Yeah, okay,” Jamie says to himself and heads to his truck, a smile on his lips.

=============

Tyler sleeps over for the first time in April, the night after the last Stars home game— a win, too little, too late, but a fucking win finally. Jamie’s goal and assist on the two regulation points for the night and Jamie will take it, is so glad he can come home to Tyler with the pride of a win in his chest.

They don’t have sex, but Tyler cooked that honey salmon that he makes that’s so good. They watch a movie on TV and Marshall cuddles with them on the couch, and when Jamie is yawning and struggling to keep his eyes open Tyler asks “Hey, is it cool if I stay?” And of course, of course it’s okay.

Jamie wakes up in the morning with Tyler in his arms and it feels like the pieces are starting to fit together again.

=========

The Texas Stars want Jamie to play in the Calder Cup playoffs, and Jamie jumps at the chance, for more hockey, more experience, more Texas.

“Come down with me,” Jamie offers, “Just for the first two games. We can drive down together and then you can have the truck to come back up to Dallas.”

He expects a no, but Tyler takes the time to consider.

“I’ll get you your own hotel room,” Jamie adds, not knowing if that’s making it more or less likely that Tyler will agree. “I would really like it if you were there.”

Tyler says yes, and they get each other off for the first time since they got back together, there in a Cedar Park hotel room after the second win.

“Fuck,” Tyler whispers after, slick with sweat and collapsed on Jamie’s chest. “Missed that. Missed you.”

Jamie traces over the roots and branches of the tattoo on Tyler’s arm, and Tyler traces the three sides of the rainbow triangle on the inside of Jamie’s wrist, right where it will always show between glove and sleeve when he’s on the ice. They spend the night relearning each other, the slow and sweet and the filthy and rough.

===========

Texas sweeps the IceHogs in four, and that gives Jamie almost ten days to just hang out in Dallas, to go to the gym with Tyler, for them to hit the park with the dogs, for lunches and brunches and dinners with Ron and David like some adorable double-date. It’s good, and easy, and Jamie thinks about home, the summer coming up.

===========

The rest of the playoffs is a grind, seven games against Chicago, seven against Hamilton. The Hersey Bears are a beast of a team and Texas still takes them to six.

And then it’s over, and Jamie spends another week in Dallas to recover before Tyler tells him to go home, see his family.

“I’ll be here,” Tyler promises, and Jamie goes.

They talk and text almost every day until they’re together again.

==========

“Move in with me,” Jamie asks when he gets back for training camp.

“No,” Tyler says, “Ron and David need me.” David had pneumonia over the summer, and Ron doesn’t feel safe driving anymore because of his vision.

“Okay,” Jamie tells him. “I understand. The offer’s always open.”

They find the time for each other, nights when Tyler comes over after dinner and Jamie follows him home for breakfast, lunch breaks between morning skate and Jamie’s pre-game naps. They work to make it work, and it’s worth it.

==========

Ron falls in the shower.

Tyler calls Jamie from the hospital. Ron has a broken hip, broken collar-bone and a mild concussion.

“We planned for this a long time ago,” David tells Tyler, and Jamie holds Tyler’s hand. Ron and David picked out the nursing home years ago, for when one of them became too fragile to be cared for at home. Tyler living with them pushed that date out, gave them half a year or more, but the time is here. They want to stay together.

They say Tyler can stay in the house, and he does for a couple weeks. He moves some stuff around, with Ron’s blessing. Dion and Eduardo move in.

Jamie asks him again, to come live with him, and this time Tyler says yes.

===========

“I need your help,” Tyler says that summer. Jamie’s spending a month in Victoria, and Tyler has come up for a week with him. They’re walking on the rocky and wind-swept beach, hands joined, shoulders bumping.

“Yeah?” Jamie asks, pretty sure there’s nothing Tyler could want that he wouldn’t give. “With what?”

Tyler chews on his lower lip. “I don’t want you to like—do it all. That’s not what I’m asking for. Not for you to fund it, just…”

Jamie bumps him and Tyler smiles at himself, how silly he’s being.

“So there’s the house,” he says. “I talked to Ron and David about this, and they agree, but their income is pretty fixed at this point, so that’s all they can do. But I thought. Okay, there’s three bedrooms and two baths, and the garage would be an easy conversion. That could house like eight kids and a house-mom type person. Kids like I used to be.”

He glances at Jamie and Jamie nods.

“But I don’t just want to house them,” Tyler goes on, and Jamie wonders how long he’s been planning this. “I want this to be a stepping-off point. A place to stay while they get their GEDs and do some volunteer work so they’ve got something for a job application. Room for couples, so they don’t have to split up to find a bed. Maybe I could find a way to get an intern counselor or something to work with them a couple days a week. I’m not. Not qualified to run it, but I thought I could be there sometimes, while you’re playing. Help them with homework or drive them to jobs or whatever.”

“It sounds like a hell of a plan,” Jamie says. “What can I do?”

==============

Ken settles back in his chair and the tiny red light on the camera goes on.

“Jamie, it’s been five years since we sat down like this; how have you been since then?”

Jamie squeezes Tyler’s hand and sits up straighter. “Good. Really good.”

He couldn’t have imagined it, back when he did his first interview after coming out, that he would be so happy, that his life would be so full. He glances at Tyler, so strong and handsome and sure of himself. He’s nothing like any of the other hockey wives, but he’s got the charisma, the personality, to walk through the doors that Jamie’s name opens for him and make friends, to turn acquaintances into sponsors for Marshall’s House.

Jamie tries to picture how his life would have gone if his phone hadn’t died on his first solo trip to Dallas. If he’d never met Tyler in a run-down Denny’s. If he’d never felt Tyler’s touch or seen his smile.

He’s not sure where he’d be without Tyler. If he ever would have come out. If he’d have made captain without Tyler behind the scenes supporting him.

He’s sure of one thing; that he wouldn’t change the way it all worked out. Wouldn’t change it for the world.


End file.
